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WORKS, tg vols., uniform, 1 6mo, with frontispiece, gilt 
top. 

Wake-Robin. 

Winter Sunshine. 

Locusts and Wild Honey. 

Fresh Fields. 

Indoor Studies. 

Birds and Poets, with Other Papers. 
Pbpacton, and Other Sketches. 

Signs and Seasons. 

Riverby. 

Whitman: A Study. 

The Light op Day. 

Literary Values. 

Far and Near. 

Ways of Naturb. 

Leaf and Tendril. 

Time and Change. 

The Summit of the Years. 

The Breath of Life. 

Under the Apple-Trees. 

Field and Study. 

FIELD AND STUDY. Riverside Edition. 

UNDER THE APPLE-TREES. Riverside Edition. 
THE BREATH OF LIFE. Riverside Edition. 

THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS. Riverside Edition. 
TIME AND CHANGE. Riverside Edition. 

LEAF AND TENDRIL Riverside Edition. 

WAYS OF NATURE. Riverside Edition. 

FAR AND NEAR. Riverside Edition. 

LITERARY VALUES. Riverside Edition. 

THE LIGHT OF DAY. Riverside Edition. 
WHITMAN: A Study. Riverside Edition. 

A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections appropriate 
to each season of the year, from the writings of John 
Burroughs. Illustrated from Photographs by Clif- 
ton Johnson. 

IN THE CATSKILLS. Illustrated from Photographs 
by Clifton Johnson. 

CAMPING AND TRAMP.NG WITH ROOSEVELT. 
Illustrated from Photographs. 

BIRD AND BOUGH. Poems. 

WINTER SUNSHINE. Cambridge Classics Series. 
WAKE- ROBIN. R iverside A Idine Series. 

SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS. Illus- 
trated. 

BIRD STORIES FROM BURROUGHS. Illustrated. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 


John Burroughs Talks 


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On Slab sides Parch 



( 

John Burroughs Talks 

His B,eminiscences and Comments 

As reported by 

Clifton Johnson 


Illustrated 



Boston and New York 
Houghton Mifflin Company 

ftibergfte #r ess Cambrihse 
1922 



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COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY CLIFTON JOHNSON 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



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CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. 




SEP 16 72 i 

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Preface 


About 1882 I began to read the nature essays of 
John Burroughs as they appeared from month to 
month in the magazines, and I was charmed at once 
with their portrayal of bird-life, their enthusiasm 
over the world out-of-doors, and the personality of 
the writer which his pages revealed. How whole- 
some it all was! 

For years I was one of the author’s many worship- 
ers from afar, with no thought of ever meeting him; 
and then chance brought us together. I had no 
special knowledge of birds, but I dealt with outdoor 
themes in my own books, and I was a countryman 
and something of a dirt farmer, just as he was. We 
had both traveled in the British Isles and in France, 
and I was more or less intimately acquainted with 
various persons in whom he was interested. We 
continued to see each other rather frequently, and 
I illustrated two collections of his essays, and he 
was the subject of some writing I did for periodicals. 

Never was there a better host, and if I made any 
untoward interruption in the tenor of his day-to-day 
routine he did not allow me to be aware of it. In con- 
versation his originality, 1 his lively interest in many 
things, and the wit and wisdom of his comments were 
unequaled in my experience. From the first I kept a 


vi Preface 

pretty full record of what he said — much of it taken 
down in notes while he spoke. My notes were made 
in long-hand, and I seldom caught complete sentences, 
but I put down enough to retain the words and 
phrases that were peculiarly his own, and the greater 
portion of this book is an attempt, based chiefly on 
the notes I gathered, to give a faithful report of 
Mr. Burroughs’s unconventional talk. 

I do not, however, include every detail, or retain 
repetitions, or get everything in the order it was said, 
and I have tried to avoid narrating again what is to 
be found in his own or other books unless his talk 
contained something fresh in substance or manner. 
I have dwelt on what seemed important, omitted 
much of the trivial and unessential, and combined 
most of the talk topically and in its natural sequence. 
Mr. Burroughs and I discussed the proper handling 
of such material as I collected, and the method I have 
adopted had his approval. 

My first Burroughs interview was printed in the 
Outlook , and I sent him the proof before publication. 
When he returned the proof he wrote: “You have 
caught the drift of our conversation and often the 
very words and spirit with great skill. We had a 
good talk and I hope that we may have more of 
them.” 

One of his remarks in this interview was that “the 
people in New York State read nothing but dime 
novels and the Sunday papers.” Of course, in a literal 


Preface vii 

sense, that is not true of the several millions of in- 
habitants of the State. It is a very sweeping asser- 
tion of a kind that he often made. But the habit of 
making sweeping assertions is not uncommon. You 
can even find instances of the sort in» the Bible. 
Burroughs simply adopted a racy way of indicating 
that he thought the people of his State did compar- 
atively little reading that had informative or cul- 
tural value. 

“That interview made more stir in my correspond- 
ence than anything else I ever was concerned in,” he 
said to me a few months after it appeared. He was 
taken sharply to task for his comment on New York 
readers, but he apparently had no regrets. 

Remarks that are similar to the one quoted in their 
exaggeration are not infrequent in this book, but the 
underlying meaning is usually evident, and they are 
so characteristic of the speaker that I have not cared 
to delete them. 

He talked freely about his friends, and he never 
“whitewashed” them. Note what he says of Whit- 
man, Roosevelt, Edison, and Ford, and of Lincoln 
and Wilson — yes, and of Mrs. Burroughs. He found 
flaws in all of them, but their admirable traits were 
also emphasized, and in his strictures on the several 
famous men he has brought out nothing new except 
in the spirited individuality of his expression. 

A great deal of what he said, as we talked together, 
was reminiscent, and this, now that I have collated it, 


Vlll 


Preface 

sketches in a somewhat desultory way his life-story; 
but there are also comments that run far afield into 
the realms of politics, religion, philosophy, science, 
and literature. 

It should be observed that my division of the ma- 
terial into chapters is rather arbitrary. Each chapter, 
as a rule, consists of a short report of a visit combined 
with a talk on some definite topic; but the talk is not 
entirely realistic, because it gathers together what 
Mr. Burroughs said at various times on that subject. 
I wished to avoid the confusion of scattered and unre- 
lated items. Of course, I made many comments and 
asked many questions during the interviews, but I 
think readers will prefer to follow Burroughs without 
such interruptions, and I have contributed little to 
the text beyond acting as the recorder of his words. 
My purpose has been to give those who read these 
pages as intimate a contact as possible with one of 
the great men of his generation. 

A literary acquaintance of much experience has as- 
sured me that the public wants a deified Burroughs, 
and that only by presenting him in such an aspect can 
what I have written win general favor. Nevertheless, 
I have chosen not to omit what seems to me signifi- 
cant, and in reaching this decision I have been largely 
guided by the advice of Mr. Ray Stannard Baker, 
whose reportorial work in connection with notable 
men and events is famous, Dr. J. H. Van Sickle, one 
of the best known of New England school superin- 


Preface ix 

tendents, and Mr. Waldo L. Cook, chief editorial 
writer of the Springfield Republican . 

Some of this material has appeared in periodicals, 
and my thanks are due to the Outlook and to Country 
Life in America for permission to republish the arti- 
cles they printed. I am also grateful to Dr. Clara 
Barms, the authorized biographer of Mr. Burroughs, 
for criticism of the manuscript and information that I 
have found useful in preparing the book for the press. 
The illustrations are from photographs which I 
made on my visits. Mr. Burroughs was very good 
about posing, and the only time he ever protested was 
when he was kindling his study fire, and the increas- 
ing heat of the flames made him uncomfortable be- 
fore I had quite finished. 

Clifton Johnson 

Hadley, Massachusetts 


















Contents 


I. The Old Farm 3 

II. Boyhood in the Catskills 27 

III. The Faults of a City 54 

IV. Schooldays 57 

V. Teaching in the Groping Years 73 

VI. A Treasury Clerk in Washington 90 

VII. Ideals in Education 105 

VIII. Farming beside the Hudson 126 

IX. Rustic Housekeeping 153 

X. Walt Whitman 164 

XI. Reading and Writing 173 

XII. Slabsides in the Woods 192 

XIII. Comments on Religion 223 

.XIV. The Charm of Nature 239 

XV. Correspondence 257 

XVI. Woodchuck Lodge and the Hay-barn Study 272 

XVII. Roosevelt 282 

XVIII. Travels at Home and Abroad 298 

XIX. Making a Living 305 

XX. Edison and Ford S17 

XXI. The World War 338 

XXII. Last Years 348 

Index 3 55 






























































































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v 






Illustrations 

On Slabsides Porch Frontispiece 

The “Old Yellow Church” of the Old School Baptists 8 
The Little Cemetery at the Turn of the Road 9 

At the Edge of the Sap-Bush 9 

The Stone House built in 1873 32 

Mr. and Mrs. Burroughs at the Riverby Well 33 

Packing Grapes 74 

The Riverby Study 75 

At Work in the Vineyard 75 

A Flowering Bush at the Margin of the Swamp 106 
April at Slabsides 107 

The Interior of the Cabin 107 

Reading his Mail at the West Park Station 126 

“The Most Relaxing Position” 127 

Afternoon in the Shadow of the Study 127 

A Waterfall in the Slabsides Woodland 160 

Beside the Shattega 161 

On the Road to Slabsides 161 

Writing at Slabsides 174 

Getting Dinner 175 

Coming from the Cold-Storage Cavern 198 


xvi Illustrations 

Water from the Spring 199 

Black Pond, a Favorite Resort near Slabsides 208 

The “Hermit of Slabsides” 209 

At the Borders of the Slabsides Swamp 226 

Warm Weather 227 

Talking with “Amasy” at the Study Door 240 

The Grandchildren in the Playhouse^ 241 

In the Doorway of the Old Hay-Barn Study 258 

The Old Farm Home in the Catskills 259 

His Boyhood Rock 259 

Writing in the Hay-Barn 272 

Sitting at his Schoolboy Desk 273 

Woodchuck Lodge and the Hay-Barn Study 273 

The Bust and the Busted 280 

The “Old Stone Jug,” where Burroughs began going 
to School 281 

The West Settlement Schoolhouse 281 

On the Piazza at the “Nest” 300 

The Summer-House 307 

The Cottage at River by known as the “Nest” 307 

The Catskills at the Old Farm End-Papers 


John Burroughs Talks 


John Burroughs Talks 

i 

June , 1894 

THE OLD FARM 

My acquaintance with John Burroughs began in the 
summer of 1894. I had been to England to illustrate 
that finest of all English nature books, Gilbert 
White’s “Natural History of Selborne,” and at the 
request of my publishers went to Burroughs to ask 
him to write an introduction for their edition. 

West Park, where he lived, is eighty miles from 
New York up the Hudson, and the West Shore Rail- 
road has a station there in a wide hollow a half-mile 
back from the river. I arrived soon after six in the 
morning. Several scattered houses were in sight, a 
small bare newly built church, and a primitive 
wooden store. The sun shone clear and hot, the birds 
were singing in the trees, and from a wooded western 
hill came a strange humming sound — the music of 
the seventeen-year locusts. 

The station-master said that Burroughs always 
walked over for his mail by seven o’clock, and I 
went up the road and sat down on a rib of rock in the 
shade of an elm and waited. 


4 


John Burroughs Talks 

At length I saw a man with a full white beard 
approaching. He had on neither coat nor vest, and 
his raiment, from his straw hat to his dusty shoes, 
had plainly had much experience with sun and 
weather. He looked like a vigorous elderly farmer. 
This was John Burroughs. 

I introduced myself, and after he had got his 
mail, he took me to his Riverby home, the stone 
house he had built twenty years before. It was on 
the higher part of his farm that terraced up from the 
Hudson, and was hidden from the highway by a 
little grove of evergreens. 

My host and I were soon on very comfortable 
terms, and I spent the day with him. Most of the 
time we sat talking in a little rustic summer-house 
that overlooked his vineyard and the quiet river 
with its steamers and tug-towed canal-boats and 
drifting sails. But there were some not unpleasant 
interruptions, as when we went to pick peas and 
cherries for dinner, or when I accompanied him 
while he gave orders to his farm helpers. 

One of the things I questioned Burroughs about 
on this visit was his early life, and in response he 
said: 

“I was born on a farm at Roxbury, New York, in 
the western Catskills, on April 3d, 1837. April 3d is 
Washington Irving’s birthday too. 

“I have always taken pleasure in the fact that 
April was my birth month, for it is my favorite 


The Old Farm 5 

spring month, and spring is my favorite season. 
That is when I feel the keenest enjoyment of life 
out-of-doors. Nature is awakening, the atmosphere 
is full of delicate odors and signs, the birds are re- 
turning, flowers are opening, and there are veins of 
warmth in the air. Things are replete with sugges- 
tion. You are not cloyed as you sometimes are later 
in the height of the season. There’s just enough. 

“Besides, there is an interesting stir on the farm 
in April. It is the month of starting anew prepara- 
tions for getting a living from the soil. I nearly 
always make a point, about the time my birthday 
comes round, of going back to the old family home 
to help in the maple-sugar making and renew my 
youth among the scenes of my boyhood. 

“My Grandfather and Grandmother Burroughs 
came to Roxbury from an adjoining county about 
1795, and their neighbors helped to build a house of 
logs, with a roof of black-ash bark. But in my early 
life the town was past the pioneer period, although 
still far from railroads. Our three-hundred-and-fifty- 
acre farm was two miles from the central village in 
a high outlying district known as the West Settle- 
ment. The district to the east of ours was Hard- 
scrabble, and that to the south was Shacksville. 

“The house in which I was born was a humble 
story-and-a-half frame structure, unpainted and 
weather-worn. It was never entirely finished up- 
stairs. Just one room was done off, and the rest of 


6 John Burroughs Talks , 

the space was a big chamber open to the rafters. 
The house stood near the highway overlooking a 
broad valley, and back of it rose a steep smooth hill 
that had a wooded top. We called this hill the Old 
Clump. On its slope, forty or fifty rods from the 
house, was our spring, and the water ran down to 
the yard through piping made of bored logs. The 
logs would rot in a few years so they’d leak, and 
we’d have to dig ’em up and lay new ones. We’d 
get the logs from the woods, and a man would come 
from the village with a long augur, and bore them 
and shape the ends to fit together. Some one told 
father that poplar was good for this purpose, and 
he tried it once, but it decayed so soon he did n’t 
use it again. 

“The spring never gave out while I lived on the 
old place, nor has it given out since until recently. 
It seems as though there was less rainfall than 
formerly. There are streams in which I used to 
catch trout, where now you can’t catch a lizard. 
They’ve dwindled wonderfully for some reason or 
other. The water’s gone. I suppose the time is 
coming when the old planet will dry up, but the 
drying during a man’s lifetime would hardly be 
observable. 

“ My father’s education went no further than the 
three R’s, but that did n’t prevent his teaching for 
a few winters. Mother was one of his pupils. She 
learned to read, but not to write or cipher. 


The Old Farm \ 7 

“Father thought he was full of the old Adam 
when he was young, and he used to tell of how 
quarrelsome and wicked he had been. But he was 
always true at heart and never would lie, steal, cheat, 
backbite, or anything of that sort. In early man- 
hood he ‘experienced religion/ joined the Old- 
School Baptist Church, and stopped horse-racing 
and card-playing, which were considered disrepu- 
table, ceased swearing, and went to church. 

“He was easily irritated, but as a rule his irri- 
tation found vent in loud and harmless barking, and 
so does mine. 

“It is from my mother that I inherit my idealism 
and my romantic tendencies. She was of Irish de- 
scent. Her maiden name was Kelly. 

“I had five brothers and four sisters, and was the 
seventh of the ten children. None of us had more 
than five children. I had one, a son. All together 
we had only fifteen. 

“’You know how much children in the same fam- 
ily will differ. I was an odd one among those at my 
old home. When we had visitors and they got to 
asking the children’s names and ages, and my turn 
came, they’d say to the folks, ‘That ain’t your boy, 
is it?’ 

“I used to feel as cheap, and I’d hang my head 
in shame. Well, I was n’t like the others. I was dif- 
ferent, and always have been — not better, only 
different. 


8 ' John Burroughs Talks 

“ About the first thing I remember is of being 
scared. Father and mother had gone off to Penn- 
sylvania on a visit and left us children to take care 
of things while they were away. We got along well 
enough in the daytime, but, come night, we were 
lonesome. I know that the evening after the folks 
started, the older children were out quite late. I 
believe they ’d gone down to the village. It got dark, 
and still they did n’t come home, and we three or 
four younger ones sat huddled up in the kitchen and 
did n’t dare go to bed. I can’t say what scared the 
others, but I recall looking into the dark cavity 
of the bedroom — that was father’s and mother’s 
room, and the door was open — and every time I 
looked into the bedroom’s gloom and vacancy I was 
filled with dread and foreboding. 

“We used to hear a good many spook stories. 
Gran’ther Kelly was a great hand for them. His 
home was eight miles away over a mountain, but he 
used to come and spend a few days with us occa- 
sionally, and he moved to a little house on the bor- 
ders of our farm when I was about eleven years old. 
He’d been one of Washington’s soldiers and had had 
so much experience that we could n’t help accepting 
as gospel truth what he said. He believed in spooks 
just as much as I don’t believe in them, and he’d 
sit down in the evening and tell ghost stories by the 
hour. It would make our youthful hair stand on 
end as we listened to the tale of the things he’d 



The “ Old Yellow Church ” of the Old School Baptists 





The Little Cemetery at the Turn of the Road 



At the Edge of the Sap-Bmh 







9 


The Old Farm 

seen — those dreadful apparitions. He used to tell 
bear stories, war stories, and Indian stories, but the 
spooks made the most vivid impression. 

“Father had two barns near the old home and 
they were both fearsome places to me. One stood 
just across the road from the house, but from the 
age of ten to fourteen I would n’t go into that barn 
after dark lest some hobgoblin should get me. I 
was afraid to visit the other bam down in the next 
field even in the daytime. We kept cows there, and 
each morning it was my task to turn them out and 
clean the stables. 

“I would enter the barn in fear and trembling. 
My anxiety was greatest in the stable on account of 
a hole there in the floor, that opened down into the 
barn cellar. This cavity was always dark and mys- 
terious, and I used to call the dog and send him 
under the barn to drive the spooks away. Then I’d 
work like a beaver to get the stables cleaned before 
the dog got sick of his job and came out. My fears 
all had their source in gran’ther’s stories of witches 
and things. He was really remarkably good at 
telling such stories. He was very superstitious, and 
he gave them a true air of mystery. 

“Up the highway from the house was a little ceme- 
tery at a turn of the road, and it troubled me a good 
deal. I knew that spooks liked to haunt just such 
places, and you could n’t have drawn me there with 
ox-chains after dark. I did n’t think of spooks in 


10 John Burroughs Talks 

broad daylight, but when dusk came and I had to 
pass the burying-ground, I would walk fast and step 
lightly. I was too scared to run, for it seemed to me, 
if I did run, I’d have a whole pack of ghosts right 
on my heels. I suppose many persons have the same 
feeling in similar circumstances. 

“My dread of spooks was n’t outgrown until I got 
old enough to make evening calls on the girls. Then 
my fears suddenly left me. I’d been thinking I 
could n’t go to see the girls at all and stay out late, 
I was so afraid as soon as night came. What a relief 
it was! I could come home past the burying-ground 
in the little hours of the morning without a tremor. 

“I don’t think I was naturally timid. The fear 
was the result of having my imagination stimulated 
and distorted by what I heard. People believed 
thoroughly in apparitions then. I was n’t scared by 
sounds in nature. Nothing that I knew about 
frightened me. I was never afraid of thunder-storms. 
I rather liked the racket and was agreeably im- 
pressed by the elemental display. I heard owls hoot, 
but I did n’t mind that, for I knew the birds that 
did the hooting. Neither did I mind the barking of 
foxes. I would hear them on the hill back of the 
house, and their barking was a wild, weird sort of 
sound that I liked. 

“But if I had to go through the woods in the dark, 
I was scared. I recollect driving the oxen home in 
the late twilight along the edge of some woodland 


The Old Farm 11 

down below the house, and how fearful I was. I 
did n’t know what I feared, but my nerves were 
affected by the strangeness of the woods in the com- 
ing gloom and the liability to see things. The woods 
themselves were quiet enough. They always are. 
You know Thoreau says: ‘A howling wilderness 
never howls. The howling is done chiefly by the 
imagination of the traveler.* 

“Probably most children have fears similar to 
mine and go through the same kind of experiences. 
I doubt, though, if my boy ever did. He certainly 
was told no ghost stories. Still, he believed in Santa 
Claus. I think I never had that belief myself. My 
folks did n’t cultivate the Santa Claus myth. We 
children would hang up our stockings in the chim- 
ney-corner the night before Christmas, but the next 
morning we always knew where the things in ’em 
came from. Perhaps there *d be cakes mother had 
baked for us, or it might be that the older children 
had put in some ridiculous things like shavings or a 
raw potato. 

“When my son was a little fellow, he believed in 
Santa Claus through and through. One day, shortly 
before Christmas, he found a sled out in the barn. 
He came to the house in the greatest excitement 
about that sled. My wife and I said, ‘Perhaps Santa 
Claus intends to give it to you, and like enough you 
will get it on Christmas morning.’ 

“Sure enough, when he woke up on Christmas 


12 John Burroughs Talks 

Day, there was the sled hitched to his bed. That 
made a deep impression on him. Later we told him 
there was no Santa Claus, and he felt as if he had 
suffered a personal loss. I remember how he sighed 
and said, ‘Well, if there ain’t any Santa Claus there’s 
an awful lot of lying in this world.’ 

“Speaking about being afraid, there was a half- 
crazy old man named John Corbin who used to 
wander about the Catskills country. We children 
made a good deal of a bugbear of him. He was per- 
fectly harmless and innocent, but we were in mortal 
terror of the old man. Whenever we saw any one 
coming slowly along the road the way he did, we’d 
say, ‘Guess that’s old John Corbin!’ Then we scur- 
ried over the fence and hid. He was simply a little 
off, you know, and mumbled to himself as he walked. 
He had an orchard down near the schoolhouse, and 
he buried his apples there in the ground. Some of 
the bigger boys broke into his apple-hole and stole 
apples, and I can remember just how he caught them 
at it and chased them away and shook his stick 
at them. 

“Most every family used to have an apple-hole. 
We had one up back of our house and each fall 
stowed fifteen or twenty bushels of our best apples 
there. Toward spring we’d dig ’em out, and they 
had a delightful flavor that apples kept in the house 
did n’t have. We’d reach down through the opening 
we’d cut in the frozen ground, and part away the 


The Old Farm 13 

straw that lay over them, and pick out such apples 
as we wanted. We became so expert that we could 
tell the various kinds by the sense of touch. There 
was a difference in the shape and in the surface. I 
recognized the winesap by some peculiarity of the 
stem. All kinds were there in the apple-hole mixed 
together. A considerable portion of them we took to 
school to eat with our dinners. 

“Mother used to spin wool. She had a big spin- 
ning-wheel upstairs in the chamber, and when she 
was using it you’d hear it every few moments go 
wz-z-z-z ! and you ’d hear her footsteps as she walked 
backward and forward. These were pleasant enough 
sounds, but they grew rather monotonous when you 
heard them all day. In the hog-pen chamber back 
of the house mother carded wool into rolls, and she 
had a loom there on which she wove cloth. 

“I helped her by running the quill-wheel and 
winding thread on the hollow elder-stalks she used 
in the shuttles. I can’t say that I liked the work 
much. A boy is n’t apt to be fond of work. It is n’t 
natural that he should be. He’d rather go fishing 
or hunting. 

“I pulled flax some, and mother spun and wove 
it and made garments out of it for us to wear. That 
linen was amazingly stout. If you fell from a tree, 
and trousers or shirt made out of that stuff caught 
on a branch, you ’d hang there. The cloth would n’t 
tear. Our new linen shirts were pretty harsh when 


14 John Burroughs Talks 

we put them on at the beginning of warm weather. 
They were full of shives, and scratched like blazes. 
They resembled the hair shirts that were worn by the 
pious old fellows of the Middle Ages, and if you were 
doing penance for any of your sins they were good 
things to have. Use and the rubbing they got on the 
washboard served to break up the shives by August, 
and then we’d begin to take a little comfort in wear- 
ing the shirts. At first the cloth was grayish in color, 
but in time it faded to white as the result of scrub- 
bing in soapy water and laying out on the grass to 
dry. 

“We did n’t have underclothing in summer, but 
in winter we wore red flannel undershirts that would 
shrink in the wash and get thick as boards. 

“I used to help make cheese. I was very fond of 
eating the curd till one day I ate so much of it I 
was sick — made a hog of myself, you know. I got 
thoroughly cloyed that time and never have been 
able to eat any curd since. But I like the pot-cheese 
that is made out of lobbered milk. 

“We got up at five o’clock in the morning much 
of the year. In winter it would be a little later, but 
before daylight, so we had our breakfasts by candle- 
light. We youngsters went to bed at eight o’clock, 
and I know I used to get sleepy before that. Mother 
was apt to sit up latest. I suppose she’d often be up 
sewing for us till ten or eleven o’clock. What a life 
of unending toil hers was! 


15 


The Old Farm 

“We had a wide open fireplace built of stone. 
Mother would sharpen a knife by rubbing it on the 
jambs, and she’d fry meat in a long-handled frying- 
pan. How vividly it all comes back! 

“I recall lying on the broad hearthstone before 
the fire watching the crickets come out of the cracks 
to sing. I would catch them and kill them. Mother 
said they ate holes in the stockings. They were never 
detected in the act so far as I know, and I imagine 
that was just a household superstition without 
foundation. 1 

“Up at one side of the fireplace was a great brick 
oven where our bread was baked. Once a week or 
so mother would say in the morning, ‘Well, we’re 
going to bake to-day, and I want some oven-wood.* 
Then some of us children would have to hunt the 
place over for dry wood — wood that could be de- 
pended on to flash up quick and make a hot fire. 

“Tallow candles were our light. We used dipped 
candles. I remember seeing mother make them — 
dip, dip, dip, into the melted tallow forty times or 
more — and after each dip the rods from which the 
wicks were suspended were put across the backs of 
two chairs to let the tallow harden. Our candle- 
sticks had hooks on ’em. The hook was made to 
fit over the back of a chair. Mother would hook 
her candle, or perhaps two of them, on the back 
of a chair in order to see to do her work, and 
I’d sit in the chair and study arithmetic, or read 


16 John Burroughs Talks 

‘Robinson Crusoe* or some other book that in- 
terested me. 

“While I was still a small boy, we put a stove in 
the kitchen in front of the fireplace. I had to bring 
in wood for it. I thought that was quite a stunt in 
winter. Back of the house was a great woodpile, and 
I’d have to dig the sticks out of the snow. For a 
woodbox we used the big open fireplace behind the 
stove. It was like a yawning cavern, and filling it 
was no small matter. I’d dump the wood down in 
front so it would seem to be full as soon as possible, 
but father would come and expose my fraud by 
pushing the wood back, and he would say, ‘John, 
look at that!’ 

“Sometimes I’d pile the wood on a hand-sled 
and jerk the sled up the steps and draw it right into 
the house. That seemed more fun than to carry the 
wood in my arms. 

“We had a stove in ‘the other room,’ but supply- 
ing that with wood did n’t worry me, because we 
never fired up the stove there unless we had com- 
pany. 

“The house wasn’t very tight, especially around 
the doors and windows, and we did n’t lack for 
fresh air. There was a crack under the kitchen door, 
and when we had a northeast snowstorm we’d get 
up in the morning to find a little snowdrift blown 
in half across the room. 

^ “Occasionally, too, the snow would blow in onto 


The Old Farm 17 

my bed. The room where I slept was ceiled, not plas- 
tered, and the windows were loose, and perhaps some 
of the glass would be broken. If a whole pane was gone, 
the space was stopped up with rags. We got all the 
fresh air there was going, but we did n't suffer with 
the cold. Two of us slept in a bed, or three when 
we were little, and it was a feather bed — yes, yes! 

“We used to kill our own beef, and in winter you’d 
see a quarter hung up in the milkhouse frozen hard. 
As we needed it for eating, we’d take a very sharp 
knife and shave it off in thin slices. 

“I never could eat salt pork as a boy. I sniffed 
at it and snorted at it, and in the prejudice of youth 
was sure it was n’t fit to eat. But I eat it now, and 
I know it sets well on my stomach. 

“How fat our pigs would get! They could hardly 
see out of their eyes. We’d boil a great cauldron of 
potatoes and pumpkins for ’em if we were short of 
milk. When a litter was born in the winter or early 1 
spring, we’d often have to tide the piggies over a 
cold spell by taking them into the house. The runt, 
as we called the smallest of the batch, nearly always 
had to have some care. The piggies were pink and 
clean with nice little noses, and I liked to handle 
them and feel their rubber-like flesh as they wriggled 
around. As pigs grow older, they get coarse and 
disagreeable, but when they are young, they are so 
active and springy I want to get in among them and 
caress them. 


18 


John Burroughs Talks 

“Pig-killing time came in the late autumn, and 
it was a great day when the pigs were slaughtered. 
Operations began some cold morning, and it was my 
business to keep up a fire in the yard under a big 
kettle of water. I never helped by tackling a pig. 
We’d kill six or seven, and one after another souse 
’em into the hot water, and scrape ’em, and hang ’em 
up in a row. At dark we carried ’em into the cellar 
and laid ’em on planks on the cellar bottom. There 
they were cut up, and the hams were salted down. 
The spare-ribs — how good those were! I tell you 
they were sweet; and the pickled pigs’ feet were 
delicious too. 

“We used to have buttermilk pop. I’d like some 
now. It was made by putting the buttermilk on the 
stove and stirring in cornmeal to make quite a 
thick porridge. We’d eat it hot with molasses. 

“Another dish we were crazy for was thickened 
milk. We had it regularly on Sunday night. I’ve 
never had it anywhere else, but it was good all the 
same. We’d heat new milk to the boiling point and 
stir in flour and add a little salt. The flour would 
form into small lumps, and then we ’d take out three 
or four spoonfuls at a time and eat it with cold milk. 
We’d chew those soggy lumps, and they had a sweet 
agreeable taste, but were perfectly indigestible, I 
suppose. 

“Now and then we’d have a bag pudding of 
yellow cornmeal put into the kettle of pork and po- 


The Old Farm 19 

tatoes when a boiled dinner was being prepared. 
Mother was sure to make those bag puddings in 
haying-time. I don’t suppose I’ll ever have one 
again. 

“It’s a wonder where our folks ever got enough 
to stop all our mouths. What appetites we did have ! 
We’d come home from school at night famished and 
go round each eating a buttered pancake. We 
could n’t wait till we got to the supper-table. 

“I was about seven years old when we had an 
anti-rent war in the Catskills. A great many of the 
farms there were leased land. Back in Colonial 
times the English king had granted immense sec- 
tions of that region to certain of his court favorites, 
who divided it up among favorites of their own. 
All this land had to pay the heirs of those old favor- 
ites a tax of a shilling an acre. Of course they never 
had anything to do with the land, but settlers took 
it and improved it and made their homes on it. 

“The people who lived on the land thought the 
tax was unjust. So they took the law into their own 
hands and said they were n’t going to pay this tax 
any more. They got the idea of disguising them- 
selves as Indians. They wore leather caps pulled 
over their faces, and were all paint, fur, and feathers 
— dreadful-looking creatures! Father sympathized 
with their side, and they used to call at our house, 
and we would give them apples and other things to 
eat or drink. They were usually just out on a lark. 


20 


John Burroughs Talks 

It was all foolishness, and did n’t amount to any- 
thing; but the feeling was very bitter and divided 
the neighborhood. 

“The down-renters, disguised as Indians, did 
most of their roaming round nights, but they would 
come together any time of day at the signal of the 
blowing of a horn. They gave orders that nobody 
should blow a horn except as a summons for them to 
gather. Jay Gould’s father lived in our same district, 
not much more than a mile away, and he was one of 
the up-renters, or “Tories” as their opponents liked 
to call them. He was a stiff-necked old fellow, and 
he declared he was going to blow his horn to call his 
men to dinner, whether or no. So blow it he did, and 
the first thing the old gentleman knew he had his 
house full of those hobgoblin Indians threatening to 
tar and feather him. 

“On another occasion, when news had got round 
that the sheriff was going to sell out a man who 
would n’t pay his rent, the Indians gathered at the 
sale and shot the sheriff. 

“They became so lawless that the legislature had 
to take the matter in hand and try to suppress the 
Indians and imprison their leaders. I’d see the 
sheriff and his posse ride past — twenty or thirty 
or even fifty men galloping pell-mell — and I was 
scared. They’d go rushing along on their horses, 
flourishing swords and muskets. It was a terrible 
sight for a youngster. My fears were the greater 


21 


The Old Farm 

because the posse represented the law, and my 
sympathy, of course, was with my own people. I 
was n’t so afraid of the down-renter Indians. 

“Father thought the posse was after him one day, 
and he ran over to Gran’ther Kelly’s and got under 
a bed. We had great fun over that, for it was said 
that his feet stuck out, and that his hiding would n’t 
have done him any good if the sheriff’s men had 
really been after him, which they weren’t. But 
they did try to lay hands on a neighbor who was a 
leader among the down-renters. He got away to 
Michigan and stayed there several years before he 
dared to come back. 

“I went to a great down-renter meeting one time. 
The horns blew long and loud over the hills, and the 
men put on their Indian disguise and started for the 
meeting-place. Their leather caps were something 
like a bag with holes cut for the eyes, nose, and mouth. 
There were horns on the caps, and a fringe round the 
neck, and a cow’s tail tied on behind, and I don’t 
know what-all. Oh! those caps were hideous-looking 
things — perfectly infernal — and no two were 
alike. The Indians had blouses of striped calico, 
belted at the waist, and some of them had pants of 
the same material or of red flannel. Take a hundred 
men together dressed up in that style, and it made 
a sight to behold. 

“The meeting was held in a big empty hay -barn. 
I went and peeked through the cracks, and the 


22 John Burroughs Talks 

Indians stuck out straw at me. They had their or- 
ators, and it seemed to me that the affair was some- 
thing tremendous. There was such a lot of them 
that I was convinced they’d carry everything be- 
fore them. 

“But they did n’t go at the matter in the right 
way. Their lawlessness and outlandishness hurt 
their cause, and the farmers still have to pay rent. 
Our old farm, like the rest, has to pay its yearly 
shilling an acre just as it did when I was a boy.” 

' While Burroughs and I were still talking in the 
summer-house in the latter part of the afternoon, 
he pointed, and said : 

“There’s a marsh hawk. Don’t you see him — 
way down the hill, near the trees along the shore? 
I think he has a nest not far off, or he would n’t 
come so freely. He’s the deadly enemy of the other 
birds, and they know it. Everything skulks and 
opens its eyes when he comes around. How the birds 
will scream at him and abuse him and follow him 
about! 

“A kingbird is after him now. Kingbirds are very 
saucy. You’ll see them perch on the backs of some 
of the biggest hawks we have and worry them. But 
the marsh hawk can make a very quick upward turn 
in his flight and strike his talons so suddenly into a 
pursuer as to make him dangerous. The kingbirds 
and all the birds seem to know the difference. They 


23 


The Old Farm 

keep at a respectful distance and are ready to rush 
into a tree where he can’t follow, if he turns on them. 

“Do you hear my wood thrush? He begins about 
four o’clock every afternoon and sings until sun- 
down. There he is behind us on a twig of that tree- 
trunk. See how well he carries himself — what fine 
manners and breeding! I never knew wood thrushes 
to steal fruit. They only take what is fallen to the 
ground — never pick it from the trees. They are 
the finest songsters of our groves and fields — their 
song has such hymn-like qualities and is so per- 
fectly sincere and melodious. The hermit thrush 
has a still more beautiful song, but is so secluded a 
bird that few people ever hear him. 

- “If anything were to happen to my bird or his 
nest, he would stop his song, and I would know 
instantly there was trouble. Early in the season 
another thrush had a nest down by the shore. He 
had a most monotonous song that was entirely 
lacking in the golden trill that this bird has. He 
kept harping on one string, and I thought to myself 
that if I lived under the hill that song would be 
intolerable, and I would have to take my gun and 
put a stop to it. One day the bird left off singing. 
His nest had been robbed. But lately I’ve heard 
that same doleful harping down in the woods in the 
next field, and I know he must have started a new 
nest there. 

“People have an idea that all birds of a kind sing 


24 John Burroughs Talks 

alike, but in reality their voices differ just as do 
those of people. There is sometimes a bird Tennyson 
or Browning that has surpassing qualities in his 
song. You find master songsters among orioles and 
wood thrushes and bobolinks and all the birds. You 
can likewise hear those that are far below the 
average. 

“I knew a bobolink once which was unfortunate 
that way. His voice was hoarse and broken. Yet 
he was just as proud of his song. He went through 
it with the same ecstasy and ended it with the same 
air, as if he’d done something wonderful. 

“ When I bought this place, one of the finest trees 
on it grew where you see that stump off to the right 
of the summer-house. I was two years making up 
my mind to cut down the tree, though all the time 
it was hurting the view and spoiling one corner of 
my vineyard. Yes, I find it dreadful hard to start 
cutting down a tree. You can undo the work of a 
century in an hour. I agonize over the necessity of 
it for days and weeks. I would n’t sacrifice that 
clump of trees down the path, halfway to the river, 
for anything in the world. I like its motion. It’s 
an object to look at, and it attracts the birds. 

“Recently I had a letter from a man in my na- 
tive town inquiring for the titles of my books, and 
their prices. I get letters from all over the country, 
and there are places in the West where they have 
‘Burroughs Days,’ but that’s the first sign of in- 


The Old Farm > 25 

terest in my books that has reached me from my 
native village. 

“It was a great while before my neighbors here 
knew that I wrote books. They saw me go round 
with my big shoes and rough clothes and never sus- 
pected it. The fact is, the people in this State read 
nothing but dime novels and the Sunday papers. 
We have no real readers. The moment you strike 
New England you strike a different atmosphere. 
The people are alert, they discuss, they have literary 
clubs. In the West, too, the people have a great 
capacity for reading and devouring things. I get 
letters much oftener from the West than from the 
East. There’s new blood out there that’s going to 
be heard from, I tell you. They have more sky- 
room, a fresh environment, and they are destined 
to be an improved New England in scope, liberality, 
and enthusiasm. 

“This home of mine is pretty well situated in 
many respects, but it is n’t always easy to get a 
good water-supply hereabouts. How to know 
where you’ll strike water under the ground is a 
problem. A while ago a well was started near our 
railroad station at a spot located by a man with a 
peach crotch. Of course, there was no sense nor 
science in his performance. Later I had this man 
come to search my premises for water — the old 
humbug! He said peach wood was good x for his pur- 
pose because there was metal in it. I had another 


26 John Burroughs Talks 

expert of his sort come at the same time, but they 
could n’t agree as to where water was to be found. 
Either they deceived deliberately or were them- 
selves deceived. The peach crotch was held upright 
in such a way that a little movement of the fingers, 
which might be involuntary, would cause it to dip. 

“‘But see!’ the man would say, ‘it pulls so hard 
it twists off the bark in my hands.* 

“However, that was simply due to his grip on the 
twigs. To make a man’s opinion on such a subject 
of value, he needs not only to be an accurate ob- 
server of things, but he must know himself.** 


January , 1895 

BOYHOOD IN THE CATSKILLS 

The train schedules of the West Shore Road did not 
suit my convenience, and I made my railway trip on 
the other side of the Hudson to a station nearly op- 
posite Burroughs’s home. I alighted from the train 
at seven o’clock in the evening and walked across 
the river on the ice in the night gloom. 

As soon as I reached the house, Burroughs in- 
sisted on getting supper for me, and when it was on 
the table Mrs. Burroughs joined us and we talked 
while I ate. She evidently felt a need of restraining 
her husband in some of his acts and opinions, and 
when he became more lively than she approved, she 
would mildly attempt to tone him down. Once she 
said to me apologetically: ‘‘I’m afraid his talking 
is keeping you from eating. It’s a way he has.” 

After supper we three sat in the library. Julian, 
the son, a school boy (1878 was the year of his birth), 
was studying in his room. “ I don’t like to have him 
study evenings the way he does,” Burroughs de- 
clared. “It’s not the time for such work, and I don’t 
believe buckling down to studying at night is good 
for school-children mentally or physically.” 

At half-past nine my hosts escorted me to my 


28 John Burroughs Talks 

chamber, where I remarked on the oddity of a small 
low oval window. 

“That was a crazy notion of mine when I was 
building,” Burroughs said deprecatingly. “I thought 
it would look well from the outside, and I had it put 
in — that useless little window ! I ought to have 
had a great wide one there to take advantage of the 
beautiful view over the Hudson. When you build 
a house you just want to get things comfortable and 
attractive inside, and the outside will take care of 
itself. I’ll knock out that wall sometime and fix the 
window right.” 

“Oh, no, you won’t,” Mrs. Burroughs commented. 

“Well, perhaps I never shall,” he acknowledged. 

The next morning at breakfast I told Mrs. Bur- 
roughs I did n’t care for coffee, when she passed it 
to me. 

“But it’s a cold morning,” she responded, “and 
I think you’d better have a cup.” 

Then Burroughs said: “Johnson, don’t you drink 
the coffee unless you want it. You are better off 
without it, and so would other people be. Coffee 
stimulates. It’s a kind of poison. I used to drink 
it every morning at breakfast, and presently I found 
that if I did n’t get it as usual I had a roaring head- 
ache by nine o’clock. 

“After I stopped drinking coffee I took to tea. 
But I found that worked against me too, and I gave 
it up. 


Boyhood in the Catskills 29 

“No one drank coffee up in my country in my 
youth, but they drank green tea. They’d boil it in 
the pot, and, as a matter of economy, they’d get all 
they could out of it by steeping it over. It was vile 
stuff. Mother would drink it cold between meals, 
and she’d eat the tea leaves. No doubt her use of 
tea shortened her days. I often went to the buttery 
myself at night, after returning from a drive to the 
village or elsewhere, and took a drink of cold tea 
from the nose of the tea-pot.” 

While we were still breakfasting, Burroughs asked 
after the health of W. D. Howells, whom I met 
occasionally. 

I replied that I thought Mr. Howells was well, 
though I did see him take some pills when I lunched 
with him the last time I was in New York. 

“He takes pills, does he?” Burroughs remarked 
regretfully. “I’m sorry to hear that. If he’s begun 
to take drugs he’ll kill himself. He ought to have 
a woodpile as I have. I do a good-sized job of 
chopping every afternoon. The open fire down at 
my study and another here at the house have to 
be kept supplied with wood, and chopping is the 
best exercise in the world. Besides, the way I 
manage things I get the heat out of my wood twice 
• — once in chopping it and again in burning it. 

“Mr. Howells promised he’d come up to see me 
in the spring, but I’m afraid he won’t. I think he 
has the feeling that I’d talk him to death, and that 


30 John Burroughs Talks 

I’d follow him about and keep him visiting hard all 
the time. I wish he could understand that he could 
do just as he pleased when he got here, and that he 
could poke about by himself and need n’t talk at all 
if he did n’t want to.” 

“You did n’t use to like Howells as well as you 
do now,” Mrs. Burroughs observed. “He sent back 
your manuscripts when he was editor of the ‘At- 
lantic’ and that made you mad.” 

“But his objections were well founded,” Bur- 
roughs said. “I always revised the manuscripts be- 
fore trying elsewhere with them.” 

After breakfast Burroughs and I walked over to 
the post-office at the station. Julian, in a blue 
soldier coat with some books under his arm, ac- 
companied us. He was going down by train to 
Poughkeepsie, where he attended a military school. 

Later, when the sun had got well up in the sky, 
we went down to where an enormous ice-house 
loomed at the edge of the river. “The new ice is 
not quite thick enough yet for harvesting,” Bur- 
roughs told me. “The families in the vicinity depend 
on the twenty-five or thirty dollars apiece that the 
men earn icing to get them through the winter.” 

We rambled along among the ragged thickets inter- 
mitting with open spaces that bordered the stream. 
The ice was expanding in the heat, and there was 
a continuous zipping of cracks with a sound that 
Burroughs called the voice of the ice-frogs. 


Boyhood in the Catskills 31 

As we were crossing a little farm, he said: “The 
crops on this place were total failures last year, 
and the two industrious young fellows who own 
the farm got hard pushed and discouraged. So 
I lent them money, and helped them get credit by 
speaking a good word for them to other people. 
That’s a kind of thing I feel some satisfaction in 
doing. There was another case lately where I 
thought assistance was deserved. A young man who 
was a neighbor’s coachman wanted to buy some 
land on which to build a home. He came to me, and 
I bought the land and arranged with him to pay me 
for it gradually.” 

When we saw some chickadees on our walk, Bur- 
roughs at once began to talk about them. The sight 
of birds or their nests, or the hearing any sounds 
the birds might utter always made an instant im- 
pression on him, no matter how he was engaged, 
and he was likely to make some comment. We passed 
a schoolhouse where he said a “pretty schoolma’am” 
taught. He often made slightly sentimental re- 
marks about young women — the result of habit, 
I suppose. 

Most of our day was spent in a low bark-covered 
one-room study adjoining the summer-house. On 
its north side were hung two sections of small trees, 
each of which had a woodpecker’s hole in it. A piece 
of meat as large as one’s fist was nailed to a maple 
tree before the door for the benefit of the birds. 


32 John Burroughs Talks 

Inside of the study the most conspicuous feature 
was the fireplace. At the opposite end was a bay 
window, near the upper part of which was sus- 
pended a large pane of blue glass. “I hung that 
glass there for decorative effect,” Burroughs ex- 
plained. “It’s something my wife had put in her 
bedroom window at the time of the blue-glass health- 
craze.” 

The room contained a lounge and several old 
chairs and three tables. The comfort of one of the 
chairs was increased by having what looked like 
the faded remnant of an ancient quilt thrown over 
its back, and this was tied in place with a string. A 
big table in the center of the room was Burroughs’s 
writing-place. It was strewn with papers, letters, 
books, and odds and ends. Underneath was a 
waste-basket overflowing with paper scraps. The 
shelves around the walls were crammed with books 
and magazines. 

“I like to sit here evenings and look into the fire,” 
my companion remarked. 

We talked again of his experience as a country 
boy, and he said : 

“All of us children at the old farm helped with 
the work. I’m afraid I was n’t as good a worker as 
the others; but I was suited with the environment, 
and, though my tasks were seldom attractive, I was 
a healthy lad, and, as a rule, contented and cheerful, 
and I appreciated the many opportunities the farm 


TV 



The Stone House built in 1873 











Mr. and Mrs. Burroughs at the Riverhy Well 


Boyhood in the Catskills 33 

afforded for pleasure. I did all the work that came 
to me — yes, and was glad to do it. Even spreading 
manure, which was heavy work that I decidedly 
did n’t like, is fragrant in my memory now. We 
did it in the spring when the grass was starting and 
the birds were returning and the hills had a wistful 
look. 

“But I didn’t knowingly observe these acces- 
sories. The subconscious self does a great deal for 
me. It’s like a net hidden under the waters, and it 
has caught many things of which I was not aware 
at the time. I never thought about the views on 
which I looked, and it was only when I gazed on the 
same scenes in maturer life that I would say, ‘How 
beautiful and grand this is!’ 

“Of course the spectacular things in nature, such 
as an unusually brilliant sunset, a rainbow, or a 
thunder-storm, impressed me as they would any 
boy. Yet though the quiet things do not consciously 
appeal to a boy, his mind is plastic and they leave 
their stamp on him. My very being was woven out 
of those early scenes and forces. Every boy who 
has any sensitiveness at all has something inherent 
in him to receive those impressions, but it mostly 
depends on later experience, thinking, and acquaint- 
ance with literature to bring them to the surface. 
Otherwise it is only the practical side of things, not 
the idealistic side, that appeals to him. 

“Aside from the unconscious influence of nature. 


34 John Burroughs Talks 

the farm is valuable to the boy in the training it gives 
him. He has to get right down to fundamentals, and 
is moulded by them in a way that helps him all his 
days. In the big cities most of the active business 
men — - those who put things through — are from 
the farm. The human output of the farm is good 
hickory timber. Farm-work is varied and full of 
emergencies and problems. There’s a constant 
necessity for planning and adjusting which de- 
velops generalship. That’s a quality the successful 
man behind the plough must have, just as much as 
the successful leader on the battle-field, to deal with 
conditions that are often difficult and puzzling. 

“I liked to help pick apples and store them in the 
cellar and in the back-yard apple-hole. Sugar-mak- 
ing was also a pleasure. It took me into the woods, 
and all its associations appealed to me. I used 
to run up the hill back of the house to the sunny 
border of our sap bush in the first warm days of 
spring and tap four or five trees on my own account 
a week or so ahead of the general tapping. I would 
lug the sap down regularly, and, amid the protests 
of the women-folks, make a place for a kettleful on 
the kitchen stove. 

“Finally I’d have a sugaring-off and mould the 
sugar into little scalloped cakes, which I put in a 
basket and peddled in the village. No one else made 
such white sugar or got it to market so early. I sold 
the cakes at two cents apiece, and the money had 


Boyhood in the Catskills 35 

value that no money has had since. Money I get 
now does n’t stick to my fingers as that did. Oh, 
how I wish I could get some that would give me the 
same delight! I know I had three dollars in silver 
quarters one spring, and I was the envy of every boy 
in town. I had charm, I had power. I used to carry 
the sugar money around a month or two till the 
novelty wore off before I began to spend it. I bought 
my first grammar, first algebra, and other school- 
books with that money. 

“We had cows and a flock of sheep, and much of 
the care of these creatures fell on me. If I made any 
complaint about the task, father would say: ‘Yes, it’s 
“Come, John,” and it’s “Go, John”; John is dog, 
fence, and pasturV 

“I had quite a reputation for expertness in throw- 
ing stones. One day I saw a bull bellowing at me 
from a field, and I said, ‘That bull and I are going 
to have this thing out/ 

“So I selected a lot of pebbles of the right size and 
got over into the field, but I took care not to venture 
far from the stone wall. My first shot took the bull 
on the tip of one of his horns, just where I intended 
it should. That’s a very sensitive spot. You could 
see him cringe. Oh, how it hurt! I threw four times, 
and every shot told, but the bull did n’t give in. I 
knew if those were n’t enough for him, he was going 
to have the best of it, and I edged along to the stone 
wall and skipped over. Then the bull came and 


36 John Burroughs Talks 

snorted and pawed up the earth and showed how 
he’d make mince-meat of me if I went back there. 

“A sheep that shows fight you can manage very 
well. When a buck starts for you, just wait till he 
almost gets to you, then step to one side and grab 
him by his fleece. We had a buck on my father’s 
farm that was always charging us. He’d put his 
head down and come for me like a catapult. 
’T would have knocked me into the middle of next 
week if I’d been hit. But I’d always step to one 
side, get a grip on his wool, jump on his back, and 
ride him all round the pasture; or I’d catch him 
by the legs, trip him up — anything. He did n’t get 
any wiser by it, though. He got uglier, and I had to 
stop. 

“I never had anything to do with horses as a boy. 
I was n’t skillful with them. All my brothers had 
colts, but I took more to cows, and I had to drive 
the oxen. I remember how I harrowed a field with 
some steers. Every now and then they would get 
tired of the job and start for home with the heavy 
drag at their heels, and I would cut cross-lots to the 
bars with my whip, ready to say, 4 Whoa, back!’ when 
they came along. I’d turn ’em round and resume 
the harrowing, but pretty soon off they’d go again 
as tight as they could run. My father was an expert 
ox-driver. I was n’t. I did n’t make noise enough, 
but you could hear him three miles hollering at the 
oxen as he drove them. 


Boyhood in the Catskills 37 

“Mowing was one of the few farm jobs in which 
I excelled. We cut all the grass with scythes and 
I took pride in my ability to keep up with any of the 
other mowers. The older mowers would start in 
and take a gait, and I would follow them closely, 
swinging my scythe with such ardor that by noon 
my knees would be trembling with the strain. No 
doubt this exertion was sometimes to my injury. 
The undelightful part of haying was the grindstone. 
I had to turn. I used to think it would be fun to hold 
the scythe and see the stone eat away at the edge, 
but to turn for some one else to grind was a weari- 
ness. 

“Sunday is linked with some of the pleasantest 
of my youthful recollections. We boys used to look 
upon it as a holiday — a day when we would have 
some fun. We’d climb the hills or we’d put in the 
day swimming and following along the streams. 
We’d go wintergreening and blackberrying, and 
we’d crawl about the rocks and ledges. My people 
were church people, but if we behaved ourselves and 
were on hand at mealtime they did n’t object to our 
rambling. There was no arbitrary restraint. 

“Yes, Sunday was always a cheerful spot in the 
week. In my memory the sun never failed to shine 
on that day. There were no storm-clouds nor 
shadows. It was truly a Sun-day — a day of the 
sun. 

“On those boyhood Sundays I carried a fishline 


38 John Burroughs Talks 

in my pocket and I’d cut a pole in the woodland. 
Sometimes I returned with fish and sometimes not. 
Father disapproved of the Sunday fishing, but he 
was human, and if I brought home several nice 
trout his reprimand was n’t severe. The trout ap- 
pealed to him, and he never refused them as tainted 
flesh. He was n’t so particular as some persons are 
about Rockefeller’s money. 

“The girls were much more apt to go to church 
than we boys were. Rut we were never bad in our 
inclinations, and there was no rowdyism in our 
Sunday pursuits. When we got older and were 
interested in dress and in seeing people we began 
to be churchgoers too. 

“From childhood I have been a haunter of rocks. 
My old home was in a region of rocks, and the ledges 
jutting out from the sides of the hills and mountains 
always attracted me by reason of the great age that 
their gray and crumbling fronts proclaimed. There 
they stood, and you could see eternity, almost, 
written in their eroded forms. I liked to sit in their 
shallow coves, and I would fancy that the Indians 
had been under there, as no doubt they had. One 
impressive contrast was furnished by the fact that 
among those scarred cliffs the phcebe-birds had for 
untold centuries built their mossy nests and laid 
their pearl-white eggs. 

“I had a mechanical turn and was very good at 
making bows and arrows, and crossguns, wheel- 


Boyhood in the Catskills 39 

barrows, and sleds. With my crossguns I used to 
hunt the chipmunks that dug up our corn. The 
chipmunks were much more abundant then than 
now. They were usually pretty hard put to it for 
food at the beginning of summer, and when the com 
was an inch or two high they would occasionally raid 
the rows near the stone walls. 

“I must have been about ten years old when I 
began to hunt with a gun. We had an old-fashioned 
flintlock musket. Father would load it for me with 
small gravel stones and send me forth to shoot the 
chipmunks around the corn. I liked that, and away 
I’d tramp to spend a couple of hours or so making 
war on the depredators. 

“Sometimes the gun would go off, and sometimes 
it would n’t. You could n’t do anything with it on 
a damp day. Even on a dry day you could n’t be 
certain but that it would flash in the pan. Clink! 
the old gun would go, and you’d get a little puff of 
smoke in your face, and that was all. It was very 
apt to hang fire. Perhaps the flint was worn and 
you’d take it out and change ends, or pick a fresh 
edge on it with your knife. We bought the flints at 
the village store, two for a penny. 

“My great ambition as a hunter was to kill a 
partridge. They’re most difficult creatures to shoot, 
you know. Soon after I was allowed to use the old 
musket, I started out with it after partridges. Sure 
enough, when I got to the woods, I found one of the 


40 John Burroughs Talks 

birds I was seeking. I can see now exactly how it 
looked as it stood there on the ground, spreading its 
tail and twitting, twitting, just as a partridge will. 

“I was n’t strong enough to hold my gun straight 
out and fire. I was obliged to rest it on a twig of a 
convenient tree, and it was such a rusty old thing 
that I had to use all my strength to pull the trigger. 
I took good aim at the partridge, but when I pulled, 
the twig broke, and down went the muzzle of the 
gun into the ground. However, the trigger did n’t 
quite get to the snapping point, and that gave me a 
chance to try again. 

“For a wonder the partridge did n’t leave. It was 
the most accommodating bird I’ve met in all my 
travels. It simply flew up into a small tree and 
walked back and forth on a branch and twitted at 
me as if it were saying, 1 ’ll give you plenty of time, 
little boy.’ 

“Presently I got a sight on it again, and I pulled 
and pulled on the trigger till ‘Whang!’ went the old 
gun, and there was the partridge fluttering on the 
ground. I felt no pity for the bird. Like all country 
boys I was glad to see it flutter there in its death 
agony. Oh, boys are savages! They don’t dread to 
shed blood. They delight in it. 

“I started for home in great triumph — not that 
my ambition as a sportsman was satisfied, but I 
had to go to the house to get the gun loaded. Father 
put in another charge and I hastened back to the 


Boyhood in the Catskills 41 

woods. Pretty soon I heard a great cawing there 
among the crows. I knew something was up, and I 
went to see what the matter was. 

“At my approach the crows flew away, and I 
stopped close by a big hollow stump and looked 
around. I did n’t make out what the trouble had been 
until an enormous owl came up out of the stump and 
turned his great staring eyes toward me. He fairly 
made me jump. It was my first experience of that 
sort. Those eyes and the bird’s deliberate motions 
and his wonderfully wise and profound air were very 
impressive. 

“After a few moments the owl flew up in a tree, 
and bent his gaze down on me, apparently wondering 
what that little boy was doing with a gun. As soon 
as I could collect my wits, I got the old musket up 
against a tree-trunk, aimed at those big eyes, and 
down came the owl. I was greatly elated to think 
that I’d killed such a noble creature as a hoot owl, 
and I carried him off home as triumphantly as I had 
the partridge. 

“Woodchucks were a pest on the farm then and 
they are yet. Sometimes I went after them with the 
gun and sometimes I made war on them aided by our 
dog. 

“They used to have shooting-matches in those 
days. Each autumn a lot of the young fellows in 
town would choose sides, eight or ten on a side, and 
within a certain limited period would kill all they 


42 


John Burroughs Talks 

could of the game creatures and such animals as 
were considered enemies of the farmers. On the 
final day the two parties met at a hotel to count 
their game and have supper. The supper was paid 
for by the side that got beaten. 

“They counted the game in something this way: 
A chipmunk’s tail, one; a woodchuck’s tail, six; 
head of an owl or a hawk, five; head of a crow, three; 
and so on. By means of those hunts the smaller wild 
creatures were destroyed in great numbers, and they 
have never recovered from the blow. 

“There was one season when a fellow had me shoot 
for him. He promised to give me some powder and 
shot in payment, and he owes that powder and shot 
to me yet. Probably I shot as many as a hundred 
creatures for him. I got six owls for him in a single 
day. It was our dog who found these owls. I heard 
him barking up in the woods, and I hurried with the 
old gun to see what he was making a row about. 
There sat the owls, six of them, on a limb just be- 
yond the reach of the dog, and I got them all. 

“Toward the end of April the partridges would 
begin to drum. I wanted to see how they did it, and 
one day, when I was rambling in the woods and 
heard a bird drumming, I tried to steal close enough 
to get a good look without alarming the drummer. 
I crept and crept along till I almost wore my pants 
out, and just as I got within a rod of the bird, it 
poked its head up over the log it was behind, and 


Boyhood in the Catskills 43 

laughed at me — ‘ He, he, he ! ’ as much as to say, 
‘Go home now, little boy, you’ve seen a partridge.’ 

“I don’t know how the creature heard me. I 
did n’t crack a twig or make a sound. Perhaps it 
smelled me. I was disappointed, but I said, ‘I’ll 
see you yet,’ and I’ve seen partridges drum a number 
of times since. 

“People used to think that the bird beat its wings 
on a log or hit them together over its back. What it 
really does is to inflate its breast and thump on that 
faster and faster till the sound runs into a low roll. 
It is a call to the female — the partridge’s way of 
wooing. As he drums he stands very straight and 
struts about with his tail widespread dragging on 
the ground. 

“As far as birds and nature are concerned, I was 
no different as a boy from the other farmboys who 
were my companions. Yet I was rather a keen ob- 
server, I think. I’ve known about the common 
animals pretty well from the time I was a child. My 
sensibilities as a youth were probably sharper than 
those of most boys. Things defined themselves to 
me from childhood rather clearly and accurately, 
and I have a more vivid memory of youthful things 
than the average person I talk with. 

“But my early observing was all by chance, and 
I knew only the common birds like the robin and 
phoebe, the ‘black chipping-bird,’ as we called the 
snowbird, the song sparrow and birds of its kind, 


44 


John Burroughs Talks 

which were known to us as ‘ground birds, 5 and such 
others of the feathered folk as are strongly marked 
and frequently seen. 

“I seldom molested them, and yet I used to join 
my boy friends in hanging up young birds by the 
legs and stoning them. The cruelty of boys is some- 
thing amazing. They will murder all sorts of crea- 
tures without a pang. But they are mostly un- 
thinking in their cruelty, and what they do in this 
respect is merely representative of the early in- 
stincts of the race. It’s the outcropping of the traits 
of our remote ancestors. It’s just the same as it is 
with certain young birds which have speckled breasts 
because their progenitors of ancient times had them. 

“Yes, the boys 5 cruelty is a survival of the early 
struggle of the race when men had to kill. They 
seem to take a savage glee in destruction, and I had 
the common cruelty of youth. I did things that 
would almost make your hair stand on end to hear 
of. Once I threw a stone and killed a bird. There 
was this live thing with wings on a fence, and I let 
fly the stone, and down fell the bird dead. ‘I did n’t 
think I’d hit it,’ I said, and I was filled with re- 
morse. 

“I get more tender-hearted as I grow older. I may 
come to the point where I can’t even chop off the 
head of a chicken. Once I never saw a chipmunk but 
that I threw a stone at him. Now, when I see one, I 
always want to salute him, and say: ‘Good-morning l 


Boyhood in the Catskills 45 

Come home with me and I’ll give you a kernel of 
corn.’ 

“I was n’t much of a hand for pets as a boy. We 
had dogs, of course, on the farm, and I had a cow I 
called my own, just as each of the other children did. 
I tried to tame crows and robins, but something al- 
ways befell them. They died or got away. I never 
have had much pleasure in caged things anyway, 
nor, strange to say, in cultivated flowers. It’s the 
wild creatures that I enjoy. If I had a canary I’d 
have to let it loose, I suppose. It seems to be dis- 
tasteful to me to see wild things caged. I’ve had 
caged birds offered me — an English skylark and 
several native birds — but I ’ve never accepted them. 

“There were trout streams in every valley in the 
vicinity of my old home, and they lured me on many 
an expedition with my fishpole into the woods and 
among the rocks. But a meadow brook was my 
favorite fishing-place, for it was there that the trout 
were most numerous. Sometimes I fished in winter 
through the ice, hooking up suckers. One winter 
day when I’d gone to school and was out at recess, 
a sleigh came along with three or four men in it. 
They were neighbors I knew, and they said to me: 
‘We’re going fishing. Do you want to go with us?’ 

“So I jumped on behind, and we drove down to 
the river. We selected a pool and cut several holes 
in the ice. A man would lie down at a hole with his 
face close to the water, and by using a straight staff 


46 


John Burroughs Talks 

with a hook of wire loops at the end he ’d pull out the 
fish. Some of the men went upstream and hammered 
with their axes on the ice to drive the fish down, and 
I stood at the lower end of the pool working a long 
pole through a hole to keep the fish from escaping 
in that direction. The men would hook up the 
suckers just as fast! and the ice was soon all alive 
with captured fish, which in a little while froze stiff 
as pokers. 

“When the sport was over, they divided the fish 
in piles, a pile for each man who took part in the 
expedition. They dropped one fish at a time in turn 
on the piles, and then drew cuts for a choice of these 
piles. The piles were very much alike, but one 
might have an extra large fish in it, or perhaps 
there ’d be a trout among the suckers. The men 
did n't count me in when they made the division, 
but at the end they said: ‘There’s Johnny. We ought 
to give him some/ And each man gave me a fish or 
two from his pile. 

“I suppose I ran away from school to go fishing 
that time, but I don’t think I was reproved much 
for it. Probably I did n’t do such a thing often. If 
I had I’d have been hauled up for it next day by the 
teacher. 

“When I carried home fish that had been caught 
in cold winter weather, they might be frozen stiff, 
but if I put them in water the suckers and bull- 
heads would thaw out and come to life and be none 


Boyhood in the Catskills 47 

the worse for their freezing. The trout, though, had 
a more delicate organization, and they would n’t 
revive. 

“Ants and some other insects don’t seem to be 
harmed by freezing. I’ve found ants frozen — 
there ’d be frost inside of ’em — but no sooner had 
they thawed than they’d run around as lively as 
ever. I don’t suppose bees are killed in winter by 
freezing. They starve to death. Of course they 
don’t need much food when they are half torpid and 
inactive, but they must have a little food to keep 
going. 

“Father took a load of butter to the town of Cat- 
skill down by the Hudson River every November, 
and one of us boys would go along with him to see 
the world. The round trip was not far from one 
hundred miles, and it usually occupied four days. 
We could n’t afford to buy grub along the way, and 
we carried enough provisions to last the whole 
journey. I remember perfectly well the box the food 
was put in. It was big and round like a cheese. 
Mother packed it with bread and butter, meat, 
beans, gingerbread, and maple-sugar cake. 

“My first trip to Catskill was made when I was 
about ten years old. I recall one harassing expe- 
rience on the way. It was early morning and we were 
getting ready to continue our journey after stopping 
at a hotel overnight. We had hitched the horses to 
the wagon and I ’d climbed up on the load of butter. 


48 John Burroughs Talks 

when father called the hotel landlord’s attention to 
me. ‘I’ve got a pretty smart boy there,’ he said. 

“To prove it he handed me the reins and told me 
to drive out of the barn. I started the horses, but 
in the doorway I miscalculated and let a hub strike, 
and there I stuck. How my performance did rile 
father! — ‘Could n’t drive a team out of a great door 
like that!’ 

“Catskill seemed to my eyes a big city. Never 
before had I got a glimpse of the outside world. 
I saw the Hudson and I saw a steamboat, and I saw 
a railway train, though it was far off across the river. 
When I returned I felt that I was a great traveler, 
and I found I had acquired increased importance 
among my schoolmates. They all thought they 
would like to take such a trip. 

“Another event that made a deep impression on 
me was the moving of the farmhouse when I was 
about thirteen. We pried it up and underneath put 
runners that consisted of two long straight tree- 
trunks, and these rested on skids made of green 
poles. All the neighbors came to help and brought 
their oxen. Heavy log chains were attached, and 
eight or ten yoke of oxen were hitched to each runner; 
and such a bellowing, hawing and geeing, and whip- 
cracking I’ve never heard on any other occasion in 
my life. It took some time to get all those oxen to 
pull together, and when they did get started, how 
they did hump up! We broke three or four chains 


Boyhood in the Catskills 49 

that day, but we would double ’em — fix ’em some 
way — and go on. The building was dragged back 
into the orchard, and a new house was erected 
where the one in which I was born had stood. The 
latter has long since disappeared. 

“I early developed a fondness for the girls. My 
first sweetheart lived in a little red house on the road 
to the West Settlement schoolhouse. She was my 
playmate. I recall that I went over to her house once 
with father when I was a little fellow. He took his 
oxen and was going to spend the day working there. 
‘You can go along and play with Eleanor,’ he said. 

* “Mother thought she’d be in school, and when 
we got there, sure enough, Eleanor had gone to 
school. But her father lifted up his voice and called 
to her. He had a tremendous voice. The school- 
house was half a mile away, and I don’t know how 
she heard, but she did. Pretty soon she came running 
up the road wearing her pink sunbonnet, and we 
played together all day. 

“She continued to be the girl I was fondest of up 
to the time I was thirteen or fourteen, though there 
was one other girl I had a special fancy for in the 
same period. But this second girl quickly alienated 
my affection by exposing a misdemeanor of mine to 
the teacher one day. She said, ‘Johnny Burroughs 
put his feet on the desk.’ 

“Her words hurt my feelings dreadfully. How 
could that girl, of all girls, be so hard-hearted? 
Afterward there was a coolness between us. 


50 


John Burroughs Talks 

“Cider apple-sass was a great institution in those 
days. We used to cook a great lot of apples for sass 
every fall, and we boiled down cider for flavoring 
them in a big kettle out in the yard. 

“Dried apples was another thing that people pre- 
pared in generous quantities. Often there ’d be 
parties to get the apples ready for drying. When a 
family was going to have an apple-cut, they sent one 
of the boys round the neighborhood to say they’d 
like to have the young people come on such and such 
a night. We would arrive about seven o’clock, and 
the young fellows would hang up their hats in the 
kitchen, and the girls would put their things in the 
bedroom on the bed. Then we’d get to work. 

“The parers sat in the center of the room. They 
had brought their paring-machines with them. Each 
machine was fastened to a board which the parer 
placed on a chair and then sat on to hold the machine 
steady. An apple was put on a prong of the machine, 
and the parer turned the crank and made the apple 
revolve against a knife he held in his hand. The 
apples were brought into the kitchen in big bushel 
baskets, and sometimes there was great rivalry as 
to which machine could do a basketful first. The 
apples, when pared, were put in pans and passed to 
the rest of the company sitting around the borders 
of the room. Some quartered and cored them, and 
others would string them ready for drying. 

“ The crowd would be talking and laughing mean- 


Boyhood in the Catskills 51 

while, and jokes would be flying across the room. 
Often there were other things flying too. Suppose 
a bashful fellow liked a girl on the opposite side of 
the kitchen — he very likely was n’t too bashful 
to throw an apple-core at her. If she was friendly 
toward him, she would smile and look sweetly at 
him out of the corner of her eyes. If she did n’t like 
him, she would scowl. 

“We cut two hours till nine o’clock. Then the 
apples were taken away, the room was swept up, 
and the boys stepped outdoors and gathered in knots 
to stretch and air themselves. But after a little we 
all got together in the kitchen again for refreshments. 
We always had apple-pie, pumpkin-pie, and two 
kinds of cake. We ’d sit down around the room, and 
those who served the food would keep bringing in 
the plates and platters till we were all served. 

“After we’d eaten, the amusements would begin. 
Sometimes we had dancing, but not much, because 
dancing was considered extreme, and the old people 
rather frowned on it. We generally had those senti- 
mental plays, you know, that used to be so common. 
For example, there was ‘Button, button,’ — the 
silliest thing! You had to guess who had the button, 
and if you did n’t guess right, the one you thought 
had it was asked, ‘What must this person do for 
accusing you so wrongfully?’ 

“In answer, you were ordered to pay some forfeit, 
and the forfeit always had kissing in it. 


52 


John Burroughs Talks 

“So we went on with ‘Button, button/ and 
‘Blindman’s buff/ and one game and another for 
about an hour. Then the girls would begin to get 
their things, and the boys would loiter near the 
door, each one waiting for his victim — the right 
one — to emerge. They accompanied the girls to 
their home gates, said, ‘Good-night/ and separated. 

“I went to my first apple-cut when I was just on 
the edge of the awkward age that lasts from fourteen 
to eighteen. I did my part with the others until the 
work and the fun were over and it was in order for 
the boys to go home with the girls they took a shine 
to. The boys had been at me all the evening about 
Eleanor, asking if I was going home with her. I 
wanted to, but when the time came, there were the 
boys and girls all standing around to see who was 
going with who, and I had n’t the courage. 

“ The proper thing would have been to sidle up to 
Eleanor and say, ‘May I have the pleasure of your 
company home this evening?’ 

“ That was a good deal of a choker for a fellow of 
fourteen. If you were the one the girl fancied, she’d 
take your arm and off you’d go. If she liked some 
other fellow better, she’d say, ‘I beg to be excused’ 
— at least that was the polite formula, but I suppose 
the girl would very often bluntly say ‘No.’ In that 
case you got the ‘mitten’ as they called it. 

“Eleanor’s brother Jim went with my sister Jane. 
The young fellows had been plaguing him about 


Boyhood in the Catskills 53 

her, same as they’d been at me, but he was six- 
teen or over and not so easily frightened as I was, 
and their joking did n’t prevent his seeing her home. 
Eleanor had to go off without me, and, to explain 
my delinquency, I told the boys I was n’t going way 
off down there to her house in the cold and dark. 
We sort of grew apart after that, and presently an- 
other fellow turned his attention to her.” 

When this winter visit of mine came to an end, I 
crossed the river to go to the railroad station, and 
Burroughs went over with me and carried half my 
belongings. 


Ill 

February , 1895 
THE FAULTS OF A CITY 

I met Burroughs by appointment one morning at a 
publisher’s in New York, and observed with interest 
that he had come to the metropolis wearing a dark- 
gray woolen shirt. He carried an old leather handbag, 
much worn and battered, in which he said he had a 
manuscript or two. 

We called together later at the offices of the “Cen- 
tury Magazine,” and one of the editors blew Bur- 
roughs a kiss the moment he appeared. They all 
seemed very fond of him. 

Toward one o’clock he declared that he was 
hungry and piloted me to a Union Square res- 
taurant. “I know this place,” he said. “It’s not 
stylish nor expensive and the food tastes good.” 

As we were waiting to be served, he remarked that 
he was quite muscular, and had me reach across the 
table and feel his biceps while he doubled up his arm. 
Whatever he chose from the menu I ordered also, 
and what I chose he ordered. “It’s plain that we 
could live together,” he commented. “ I ’m going to 
be here all the week, and I wish you were going to be 
here too. We’d have a good time together. Well, 


The Faults of a City 55 

you must come up to my place in April and we will 
have some fun there. 

“Before my beard whitened, the bunco-steerers 
in New York used to get after me. I suppose they 
knew well enough just by looking at me that I was 
from the country. There was only once I lost any- 
thing by their operations. I was young then, but I 
ought to have known better. I went into an auction 
room and bid off a watch. The watch was worthless, 
and I was out the ten dollars I paid for it. Another 
time two men wanted me to come with them and 
make a deal on very favorable terms for pasturing 
a horse of theirs, but I would have nothing to do 
with them. 

“I don’t stay in New York any longer than I have 
to. I don’t like the city noise and dirt. My lungs are 
filled with dust already. I like the smell of oxen, if 
I don’t get too much of it. I’ve been breaking out 
roads with oxen the past week. * 

“When I visit New York, not only is my nose 
outraged, but my ears are stunned and my eyes are 
confused. I can’t stay a week in any city without 
longing for the green fields and the woods. Living 
in one would never do for me. Everybody you see 
there is rushing about in a great hurry, and you are 
amid a perfectly senseless uproar. I’m impressed 
every time I visit a large place with the discord of 
its noise. 

“I can’t conceive how a poet can live in a city, but 


56 


John Burroughs Talks 

of course poets have done so, and very likely more 
will in the future. This is an age of concentration. 
The towns are all the time growing larger, and wealth 
gets to an increasing degree into the hands of the few. 
The decentralizing tendency of the Middle Ages will 
never come again. The love of nature will send more 
people to the country than it has in the past, but no 
great current will turn in that direction. The mass 
of men don’t like the country solitude. They are 
drawn by the greater variety of the city — and the 
city does get more out of a man. It is a big stimulus, 
but it kills him far sooner than the country would. 

“Country sounds mean something. I like to hear 
the cows low, or the crowing of the roosters. The 
bleating of calves is delightful, and the voice of the 
pasturing sheep is one of the most charming of 
sounds. It is the call of the mountains. No city 
sound at all approaches it in beauty. No chime of 
bells anywhere is to be compared with the bleat of the 
sheep on a summer evening. 

“Nearly all country sounds are agreeable. Even 
the rattling of a team along a dirt road has a pleasant 
flavor and awakens interest. Still we have to make 
some exceptions. I can’t say that I like to hear a 
guinea-hen or the bray of a donkey or the voice of a 
peacock. Nature gave the peacock that splendid 
tail, but offset it with that dreadful voice.” 


IV 

April , 1895 
SCHOOLDAYS 

I reached Riverby late in the morning, and after 
eating a shad dinner at Burroughs’s home went off 
with him to the wooded hillsides west of the village. 
In a piece of swampy meadow-land we found the 
skunk-cabbage blossoms thrusting up from the 
soggy soil, and he picked one, broke off the earlike 
sheath to have a look inside, and sniffed it to see how 
bad it smelled. 

On the borders of some deep woods was a mossy 
little house under a group of great hemlocks. “It’s 
falling to pieces now,” Burroughs said, “but a few 
years ago a family lived there. I used to see the only 
child of the household pass on her way to and from 
school. She was ‘sweet sixteen,’ and a very pretty 
modest girl with pink in her cheeks. But perhaps 
the pink was not the flush of health, for she soon 
died of consumption.” 

He had a greeting for every one we met, par- 
ticularly for the children. He always spoke to the 
dogs and occasionally stooped to pet them and con- 
verse in joking detail, and they responded in a way 
that made evident a friendly feeling that was mutual. 

Toward night we returned to Riverby. A number 


58 John Burroughs Talks 

of beehives were scattered about on the grounds, 
but Burroughs said most of the bees had been win- 
ter-killed, He rapped on the hives experimentally 
and poked some of the dead bees out at the entrance. 
One hive he tipped up and looked under. 

We had supper and were going to the bark-covered 
study to spend the evening when we met Julian 
with his gun and game-basket returning from an 
all-day solitary hunting excursion. The only game 
he had secured was one duck, and he was footsore, 
but he was enthusiastic over his experiences. 

The next morning, soon after six, Burroughs 
roused me with a summons to breakfast by call- 
ing from the furnace in the basement. His voice 
came up through the register. After breakfast Mrs. 
Burroughs showed me her best curtains and up- 
holstered furniture. 

The day was rainy, and Burroughs and I presently 
adjourned to the study. A gray cat was hanging 
about, and while he was poking the fire she jumped 
on his back. When he sat down she settled herself 
in his lap. “She’s a strange cat that came to us,” he 
said. “She looked hunted and wild at first, but now 
she’s quite domestic. I talk to her a great deal.” 

On the fireplace mantel was a little red devil with 
a wooden bucket at his side. A rubber band was 
hooked over a horn and extended down to his right 
hand. “I put the band there,” Burroughs told me, 
“but the little devil and the bucket were a present 


Schooldays 59 

from two young women who visited me last fall. 
The flies bothered me a good deal then, and I used 
to snap at them with a rubber band. It would 
knock them into smithereens. The girls saw my 
cruelty, and they brought the devil-guarded bucket 
to put my victims in.” 

“I wish you’d tell me something about the schools 
you attended,” I said, and his response to this and 
other questions was: 

“I remember the first day I went to school. I 
could n’t have been more than four or five years old, 
and the mile or so I had to travel was my first great 
journey. I wore a suit my mother had made. It was 
a little cotton suit, striped blue and white, and it 
had flaps on the shoulders that went up and down 
like a dog’s ears, if I ran. 

“Oily Ann, my oldest sister, led me by the hand 
down the Hardscrabble road easterly to the ‘Old 
Stone Jug,’ as the schoolhouse was called. Its walls 
were of rough unhewn stone, and their aspect was 
the same in the schoolroom as outside, except for a 
coat of whitewash. The seats seemed very high. 
The one that some of us smaller ones sat on was just 
a slab from the sawmill, flat side up, with widely 
slanting legs inserted underneath. I could n’t touch 
my feet to the floor from it. One day I went to sleep 
and fell over backward against the rough wall, and 
knocked a great hole in my head. The next thing I 
knew I was lying in a house that was near the school. 


60 John Burroughs Talks 

and there was a smell of camphor in the air. I don’f 
remember how I got home, but I must have got 
there some way. 

“The memory of many things connected with 
those far-away schooldays continues amazingly 
vivid. If I go into a schoolhouse now, I get the same 
odor I did in the first school I attended in the Cat- 
skills. It takes me right back there among my old- 
time schoolmates. 

“I learned my alphabet in Cobb’s Spelling-Book. 
It was arranged with the vowels first and then the 
consonants. The teachers had the most mechanical 
way of drilling that alphabet into the children. I 
was months learning it. The schoolmaster called me 
up three or four times a day and pointed out the 
letters one by one with a penknife, skipping up and 
down the columns at random. ‘What letter’s that?’ 
he would ask each time he pointed. 

“Hen Meeker sat next to me. He was older and 
larger than I was, and I recall that once, when the 
teacher had him at his side saying the letters, Hen 
came to small c, and could n’t tell what it was. The 
master kept at him, but there Hen stuck at the c. 

“‘Why,’ the schoolmaster said, ‘I’ll bet little 
Johnny Burroughs can tell that letter.’ 

“ So he had me come and look at it, and I said ‘c,* 
and was very proud of my knowledge. 

“I was the only one of our family that ‘took to 
larninY as my father would say, and I don’t think 


Schooldays 61 

I hankered after the studying much. The days in 
school were very long, but we had royal fun in play- 
time. We played tag, and we played ‘ den/ which 
was a kind of racing game, and we played ball; yes, 
and we could have fun out of nothing in those days. 

“Children have nimble brains. How easily their 
imaginations are kindled! I remember in particular 
one noon at school there was a very curious demon- 
stration of the power of youthful fancy. All the 
larger schoolgirls were thrown into a great state of 
alarm because they thought the end of the world was 
coming. They wept and wailed, and I was scared 
with the rest. A thunder-storm was rising over the 
hills, and the black clouds looked very portentous. 
I realized that, and I expected everything was going 
to collapse, though I had no notion just what the end 
of the world meant. 

“Of course the storm passed away, the trumpets 
were not sounded, and we went back into the school- 
house thinking the event had been postponed — 
that it was n’t to come off till the next day, or the 
day after, or some other day. It had missed fire, 
anyway. I don’t know how the girls got their idea. 
There were no grown people in the neighborhood 
who were looking for the end of the world. Perhaps 
the girls might have seen an item of the sort in the 
newspapers, for it was about the time that the 
Millerite excitement swept over the country and 
believing Adventists had prepared their ascension 


62 John Burroughs Talks 

robes. But, wherever the idea came from, there 
those big girls and the rest of us stood in the school- 
yard watching anxiously to see everything go. 

“After two summers at the Old Stone Jug I went 
to a school in the opposite direction in the West 
Settlement. The school building was a little gray 
unpainted wooden affair toeing on the highway down 
by a brook. There was a continuous desk against 
the schoolroom wall, and a backless seat to match, 
and we little ones had three long benches in the open 
space, arranged to form three sides of a square. A 
big box stove stood in the center of the room. 

“ I used to amuse myself, when the teacher was n’t 
looking, by slipping round on the line of seats. How 
could a little boy sit still all those long hours? 
There could n’t have been many small children, for 
I remember slipping clear round. I suppose I’d skip 
over the others. If the teacher looked, I ’d stay still, 
but as soon as he turned away I’d begin to slide 
again. 

“We had the first blackboard I ever saw in that 
schoolhouse, and it was quite an innovation for the 
Catskills. It made us feel that our school was picking 
up. The material was wood painted black. It was 
about three feet high and four feet long, and was 
fastened up near the door. Several of the big boys 
studied algebra — something I ’d never heard of 
before — and they did their problems on that black- 
board. What a mystery it was — the x , y, s, and the 


Schooldays 63 

plus and minus they used! I would draw a deep 
breath and wonder whether I could ever master a 
thing like that. 

“The schoolhouse by the brook was presently 
abandoned, and we went to a new clapboarded 
building painted red, on higher ground not far away. 
That is still the schoolhouse for the district. There 
was a noon-mark cut in a window-sill, and we got 
very restive if we were not dismissed the moment 
the sun got to that mark. 

“If we followed the road, the schoolhouse was 
two miles from my home; but there was a short-cut, 
though I seldom took advantage of it at first because 
it passed through a patch of woods, and I was afraid. 
I had plenty of time then. A cousin went with me, 
and in winter some of the older children. We used 
to start by half-past seven o’clock, so as to have 
ample opportunity to loiter and play. I got to know 
every inch of the road between home and school and 
had many little adventures all along it with one 
thing and another. 

“Once in a while we ventured through the woods 
on a summer morning and stopped by a spring there 
to get crinkle-root, which we liked to carry to eat 
with our dinners. It’s a kind of cress — an appe- 
tizing thing, almost as strong as horse-radish. In the 
deepest, dampest spot in the woods, near that spring 
run, we would see those ghostly insects — I hardly 
know what you call them — that collect in masses 


64 John Burroughs Talks 

on the branches of trees. They are white as snow, 
and very fuzzy, with a long down on them. They ’d 
collect in a ropy mass bigger ’n your fist strung along 
a branch, and they would stir with a rhythmic pulsa- 
tion that filled us with a sort of dread. You see we 
did n’t know what they were. Sometimes we ’d hit 
the branch a rap, and that would make them come 
stringing down. Then we’d run. 

“The short-cut saved a mile. If I went to school 
that way, I soon left the road and followed a footpath 
through a meadow and a piece of woodland and a 
pasture, passed over the brook on a stout slab, and 
went on through more meadow and a neglected 
orchard to the highway near the school. 

“For our dinner we carried rye bread and butter, 
pie, and cake, and our pockets full of apples. In 
the long noontime, after we’d emptied our dinner- 
baskets, we boys would go to the brook, and per- 
haps have a swim in the swimming-hole. 

“Sometimes we’d fish for trout. To do that we’d 
roll up our pants the whole length of our legs, and 
our sleeves way up to our shoulders, and then we’d 
wade in and reach for the trout with our hands under 
the bank. Once in a while we’d get hold of one and 
capture it, but oftener we’d feel their slippery forms 
glide through our fingers. The trout swam under the 
bank to hide from us. Occasionally they’d seek 
shelter in a hole like a sack, and you’d see a tail 
sticking out. Then we’d run our fingers beneath 


Schooldays 65 

the trout and slide ’em very carefully along toward 
its head, tickling it at the same time. If you were 
gentle, the trout would stay perfectly still, as if it 
actually enjoyed being tickled. They fish that way 
in England, I believe. When we’d slid our fingers 
along far enough, we’d nip the fish right behind the 
gills and toss it out. 

“We used to get well spattered in this paddling 
in the water, but we did n’t mind that. A wetting 
was nothing in summer. But I had an experience 
with the brook when I was on the way to school one 
winter morning that was n’t so pleasant. We were 
having a freshet, and the stream was very full. The 
slab we usually walked across on had been washed 
away. That did n’t prevent the older children from 
jumping across all right, but when I tried, in I went, 
kersouse! — right under water. I scrambled out 
quickly enough and went along to school. There I 
pulled off my boots and poured the water out. The 
teacher let me stand by the stove most of the day, 
and, strange to say, I did n’t take cold. 

“Now and then we school children would play 
hooky and make a trip down to Stratton Falls, a mile 
and a half distant, after slate to use in making slate- 
pencils. It was a place where there were high ledges, 
and a horseshoe fall of water that you could get in 
behind, and we liked to hang around there and play. 
We would run away at noon and not get back until 
long after school had begun. Our excuse was that we 


66 John Burroughs Talks 

had to go to get slate-pencils. It was a great adven- 
ture. Streaks of slate cropped out in the ledges and 
we used to get little slabs of that slate and carry them 
home. Some of it was red and some blue. The way 
to tell if the slate would do for pencils was to rub it 
across the ends of your under teeth. You knew in- 
stantly by the grit if it was too hard or too soft. 

“ We took the little slabs of slate home, and in our 
spare time would work them up into slate-pencils. 
I’d cut with my knife two straight deep gashes on 
one side about a quarter of an inch apart, drawing 
the knife back and forth and back and forth by the 
hour. Then I’d turn the slab over and start other 
cuts to meet the first ones. By and by you broke off 
the slab along the gashes, and then you could whittle 
your piece of slate into shape. We got all our slate- 
pencils in that way. You could n’t buy them at the 
store. I never heard of such a thing as buying slate- 
pencils when I was a boy. 

“We children did n’t pay much attention to 
flowers. It is n’t a country that abounds with wild 
flowers, but there were plenty of violets. We 
gathered those — chiefly, though, to ‘fight roosters’ 
with them. The way we did that was for two of us 
to each take a violet and hook them together and see 
which fellow’s would pull the other’s head off — see 
which violet would stand the most strain. 

“One of my schoolmates was Jay Gould. He sat 
right behind me, and we were quite chums. He was 


Schooldays 67 

a small wiry fellow, aristocratic in his feelings, and 
not inclined to mix much with the rest of the farm- 
boys. I remember very well his superior, scornful 
laugh. He was clever and quick and a good student, 
and he easily stood at the head in his classes. 

“At one time a boy came from another town and 
inoculated the whole school with a mania for wres- 
tling. Jay did n’t like our rough-and-tumble sports 
and kept out of them for the most part, but he used 
to wrestle with me. We were about of an age, and 
very evenly matched, and we’d wrestle by the hour 
until we’d pant like dogs. I was a little more mus- 
cular and had the most science, but Jay had infinite 
wind and endurance. He was like a boy made of 
India-rubber and steel. You’d think you had him 
down when you had n’t, and then you ’d find him on 
top. If he could n’t get on top any other way, he ’d 
break his holt, which was against the rules. He 
was n’t very particular about rules. The one point 
with Jay was to get on top. 

“After he left school I helped him, when he was 
hard up, by buying two old books of him, a German 
grammar and a geology. They cost me eighty cents. 
Jay went out into the world early and our intimacy 
ceased. 

“By the time I reached the age of twelve, I was 
old enough to be a valuable helper on the farm, and 
after that I went to school only in winter. 

“Presently a longing developed for more knowl- 


68 John Burroughs Talks 

edge than I could get in the district school. A neigh- 
bor’s boy came home from Harpersfield Academy, 
a dozen miles or so away, giving such an enthusiastic 
account of its advantages that I wanted to go there 
too. I remember what rosy cheeks that boy had. 
He’s dead long ago now. Harpersfield! Even the 
sound of the name was beautiful in my imagination. 
How I dwelt on it! Harpersfield! To me it meant 
a field full of men playing on harps, and there was 
great charm in the mental picture the idea presented. 

“That was in 1853, and father promised to let me 
go to Harpersfield if I would take hold and work hard 
all the fall. I eagerly accepted the conditions, and 
thus it happened that I did my first and only plough- 
ing. I tackled a big hillside field above the sap-bush. 
The ground had to be made ready for sowing rye, and 
it had been ploughed once, but needed cross-plough- 
ing before it was sowed. I walked the furrow and 
drove the horses to and fro, and the visions of Har- 
persfield beckoned me on. I recollect perfectly those 
beautiful September days in that breezy uplying 
field with its broad view down the valley. 

“I finished the ploughing and helped faithfully 
with the other fall work, but when the time came to 
go to the academy my father did n’t feel that he 
could afford the expense. Besides, he thought it 
would be hardly fair to the other children, for none 
of them was going off to school. But then, they 
did n’t want to go. The less schooling the better so 


Schooldays 69 

far as their sentiments were concerned. So I stayed 
at home and attended the district school again 
through the winter. Yet, I guess I went to Harpers- 
field after all, for the aspiration to go was the main 
thing. Indeed, though the going seemed very vital 
then, I dare say I’ve done just as well as if I’d actu- 
ally gone to Harpersfield. 

“In the spring I determined to earn some money 
myself to pay for the education I was so eager to 
have and I went off and got a position as a teacher. 
There was no occasion for spending much, and I 
carried home nearly the entire amount of my wages. 
That enabled me to pay my board and tuition for 
three winter months at the Hedding Literary Insti- 
tute in Ashland, about fifteen miles easterly from 
Roxbury. The rates were very reasonable. Two and 
a half a week paid for board and tuition. There must 
have been nearly three hundred students, and they 
all lived in a big seminary dormitory, which was very 
like a factory building, bare and many-windowed 
without the least pretension to architectural charm. 
In those days such seminaries were scattered all over 
the State, but they ’ve about all disappeared now. 

“My studies were algebra, geometry, grammar, 
chemistry, French, and logic. The only study in 
which I excelled at Ashland was composition. I 
remember I stood second. First honors went to a 
boy who afterward became a Methodist dominie. 
He was n’t very winning in some ways. He was very 


70 John Burroughs Talks 

lean physically, and very lean mentally, and he 
lacked oratorical gifts, but he made the best prayers 
I’ve ever heard. Finally, in his old age, he had to 
teach school, and he died in harness. I had a room 
to myself, and I found the life enjoyable and re- 
gretted that I did n’t have the money to continue at 
Ashland longer. 

“In the spring I returned to the farm, where I 
worked till fall. Then I took up teaching again to 
get funds for another period at a seminary. Late in 
the winter I collected my salary and immediately 
afterward became a student at a seminary in Coopers- 
town. Besides acquiring book knowledge there, I 
rowed on the lake, played baseball, and engaged in 
other sports. I took special interest in the writing 
of compositions, and I remember that I chose for 
the subject of one of them ‘Goodness Essential to 
Greatness.’ 

“While I was at Cooperstown I got acquainted 
with a pretty black-eyed girl from Unadilla, and 
after I left school I corresponded with her. I think 
I was attracted mainly by the name of the place where 
she lived. Unadilla — that wild Indian name en- 
chanted me. If it had been Oshkosh I don’t believe 
I ’d have written her. Still she was a very pretty girl. 
All the boys admired her, and when she appeared on 
the street half a dozen of us were likely to follow her 
about, a little behind, with our mouths watering. 

“When Matthew Arnold was in this country, he 


Schooldays 71 

wanted to see Indianapolis. He was drawn by the 
name — the combination of a new world beginning 
and a Grecian ending. He thought that in conse- 
quence the place must have a picturesque and in- 
teresting individuality. Place names that are sig- 
nificant or rhythmical have always appealed to me 
in the same way. 

“The young men at the seminaries of that period 
often took the notion to wear their hair long — 
combed straight back from the forehead and hanging 
down behind enough to overlap the coat-collar a 
trifle. It was one of the freaks of the time. I adopted 
the custom and continued it for a number of years. 
The habit was not general; but was confined to oc- 
casional youngish fellows who wished to signify to 
the world that they were dissatisfied with the old 
order of things and determined to better them. It 
was the mark of a come-outer — a revolutionist. 

“ On the Fourth of July we students all went for a 
picnic up on the banks of Otsego Lake, and I was 
one of the orators chosen for the occasion. I recall 
that when I spoke, I stood up under a tree with the 
listening girls all about. There were boys in the 
crowd, of course, but I was most impressed by the 
girls. I still have in my mind’s eye their white 
flounces and furbelows. I guess my oration was to 
the girls. It was in the patriotic vein, delivered in 
true spread-eagle style. Besides orating I had to 
respond to a toast — The Pilgrim Fathers. Neither 


72 John Burroughs Talks 

the responding nor the speech troubled me any. 
I wrote out beforehand all that I proposed to say 
and committed it to memory, and I spouted it flu- 
ently enough. One of my fellow-speakers on that 
July day afterward became an eminent lawyer in 
New York City. I thought him the finest boy 
orator I had ever known. 

“ My cash ran so low, as the close of the Coopers- 
town term approached in midsummer, that I had to 
send home for enough to get a new coat and vest for 
the last-day exercises. This was an important oc- 
casion in my eyes, and I spoke an original oration — 
something about nature. I went back to the home 
farm to spend the rest of the summer working in the 
hayfield. My student days were over.” 


September , 1895 

TEACHING IN THE GROPING YEARS 

The first thing Burroughs did, on the morning that 
I got to Riverby, was to take me down to the vine- 
yard and make me eat cluster after cluster of grapes, 
and he filled my pockets with peaches. 

“It’s a mistake to eat the grape seeds,” he said. 
“They’re apt to make trouble in the stomach. The 
most delicate way to deal with grapes is to just 
swallow the juice and reject the rest, pulp and all. 
That’s what I’ve been doing this season, and I’ve 
thrived on it. There’s no virtue in the pulp, anyway.” 

By and by we went for a walk, and fell in with 
some children and a dog, who accompanied us for a 
while. Burroughs talked to the dog and played with 
him and helped him over the fences. I think, in all 
my acquaintance with him, he never failed to have 
a companionable talk with every dog he met. He 
was strongly inclined to speak to the animals, do- 
mestic and wild, large and small, as if they under- 
stood him, and to address them with some lively 
remarks. 

We went up through the woods beyond the vil- 
lage to where Burroughs had a man at work re- 
claiming a swamp. He did n’t see the man, but 


74 John Burroughs Talks 

found several fires smouldering in some nearly con- 
sumed rubbish-heaps. 

“I don’t want that fire to spread,” Burroughs 
remarked. 

He knew where to find a pail and he filled it at a 
pool and splashed the water about on the embers. 

Afterward he said: “Come with me. There’s a 
nice spring on the edge of the swamp. We’ll have a 
drink.” 

He led the way to a stake on the tip of which was a 
rusty tin can turned bottom upward. With this 
receptacle he dipped up some water that was de- 
liciously cool and pure. 

In a neighboring group of rocks was a cave which 
he said he liked to crawl into on a hot day. This 
time he seated himself on a ledge at the mouth of 
the cave, where he looked very like an old-time 
hermit. 

When we returned to Riverby, we picked some 
corn for dinner and gathered a basket of peaches. 
Some of the peach trees were not doing well, and 
Burroughs dug around the base after borers. 

A flock of ducks was waddling around the out- 
buildings, and he fed them and gave them water. 
Evidently he was very fond of them. He talked with 
them every time he was in their vicinity, and they 
kept up a clatter of quacking in response. 

“My wife thinks they are dirty creatures,” he 
said, “ and she often chases them away from her do- 



Packing Grapes 







The Riverhy Study 



At Work in the Vineyard 






Teaching in the Groping Years 75 

main with a broom. They have come to know her 
as their enemy, and whenever they hear the back 
door of the house open, they start to run. But after 
going a little distance they give a backward look, 
and if they see a friend they call a halt. If they see 
Mrs. Burroughs they run faster than ever.” 

We went for another walk in the fields and woods 
late in the afternoon. A young woman who was so- 
journing at a neighbor’s went along too, remarking 
rather gushingly that she felt highly honored. On a 
pool below a roadway culvert we saw some water- 
striders skating about. Burroughs wanted to ex- 
amine one. So he took a stick and kept them from 
going under the bridge while the young woman tried 
to effect a capture. She made most heroic grabs 
and paid no attention to the spattering she gave her 
skirts. Finally she surprised herself and the rest of 
us by actually securing one of the skating insects, 
anc^we looked at it through the folding microscope 
that Burroughs carried in his pocket. 

After we had resumed our ramble he said: “Have 
you noticed how scarce bluebirds are this year? 
Early in the season the newspapers said the blue- 
birds had been practically exterminated by our hard 
winter, and I’m afraid that’s pretty near true. I 
saw only a pair or two of them in the spring. In 
August there was one solitary bird around here for 
several days. I suppose it had no mate. I saw a pair 
later. That showed they were n’t all gone, so we can 


76 John Burroughs Talks 

hope they will increase in time to their old numbers.” 

On our way back he recited a considerable number 
of Mother Goose jingles, and remarked, “I think 
the old lady was a good deal of a poet.” 

He dwelt with especial pleasure on the verses that 
begin with 

“ There were three jolly Welshmen, 

As I have heard say. 

And they went a-hunting 
All on a summer’s day. 

“ From morn till night they hunted. 

And nothing could they find 
But a ship a-sailing, 

A-sailing with the wind. 

“One said it was a ship, 

Another said, ‘Nay*; 

The third said it was a house. 

With the chimney blown away.” 

“You have there three types of mind,” Bur- 
roughs said — “ first, that of the person who sees 
things as they are; second, that of the person who 
denies everything; third, that of the person who 
romances over what he sees, and to whom a simple 
natural explanation of phenomena is not satis- 
factory.” 

We were a little late to supper, and as a conse- 
quence Mrs. Burroughs was almost in a scolding 
mood when we appeared. But that did n’t last, and 
as soon as we were seated at the table she called my 


Teaching in the Groping Years 77 

attention to the bread and apologized for it at great 
length. “I had bad luck with it,” she said. “The 
yeast was poor. I usually make my own yeast, but 
I bought what I used this time. I don’t want to have 
you think that I can’t make good bread and — ” 

“Oh, never mind!” Burroughs interrupted, “I 
don’t see but that the bread is all right enough. It ’s 
a small matter, anyway.” 

However, it was no small matter to her (probably 
it would n’t have been to him if the bread really had 
been poor), and she said all she had to say on the 
subject before she stopped. 

Sometimes Mrs. Burroughs had a hired girl, and 
this was one of the times. So after supper she left 
the dishes for the girl to wash. Burroughs said he 
and I would go and sit in the little corner library, 
but she insisted on our spending the evening in the 
parlor, which she had fixed up with an elaborateness 
that made her feel she could be justly proud of it. 
The parlor could n’t possibly have been cleaner or 
more tidy. 

During this visit, with some encouragement from 
me in the way of questions, Burroughs again became 
reminiscent and told of how he taught school in his 
early manhood. 

“It was late in March,” he said, “just before I was 
seventeen years old, that I set forth to seek my first 
job as a teacher. I journeyed southeasterly forty 
miles or more into Ulster County. A part of the way 


78 John Burroughs Talks 

I walked carrying my black oilcloth satchel, but 
most of the distance I traveled on top of an old Con- 
cord stage-coach drawn by four horses. 

“While on this trip I was in one of the tavern 
bar-rooms on the first day of April waiting for the 
stage to start, and I saw a big copper cent on the 
floor. I forgot it was April Fool’s Day and very 
innocently stooped to pick up the coin. But the cent 
was nailed fast, and that made all the loafers snicker 
and put me to confusion. 

“I was hired to teach in a little red schoolhouse 
at the obscure hamlet of Tongore. My wages were 
ten dollars for the first month, and eleven afterward, 
and 1 4 boarded round. ’ I had twenty or thirty pupils. 
It was a big school for a crude, inexperienced youth 
like me to manage. I was bashful and stuttered 
when embarrassed. However, I had to teach only the 
elementary branches, and I could impart knowledge 
with considerable facility. I secured the good-will of 
my pupils and we got along very well together. 

“Although I had cut loose from my father’s farm, 
I was still in an agricultural district, and there were 
mountains, high and near. The people were engaged 
in miscellaneous farming, instead of dairying, which, 
I had been used to, and I was interested in their ways 
of working, chiefly because these were more or less 
new to me. Sometimes I went out in the fields to 
rake, or helped in other ways. 

“When a master came to a place to begin teaching. 


Teaching in the Groping Years 79 

he was asked where he’d like to make his home, and 
he’d select some house where he’d leave his duds 
and go Saturday nights to stay over Sunday, and 
his washing would be done there. I chose to make 
my home where there were the prettiest girls. During 
the rest of the time I shifted from house to house 
among the homes of my pupils. 

“I was always put in a cold bed in the spare 
chamber — a bare, empty room, not in the least 
cheerful. One night I remember I went to a house 
where the best bed broke down under me. The 
family was poor, and the bed was a corded one with 
a rickety frame. I tried to turn over, and it began 
to rock and sway like a ship at sea. Then all at once 
down it went with a crash. But I clung to the 
wreck and slept amid the ruins until morning. The 
house people knew nothing of the disaster until I 
told them at the breakfast-table of what had hap- 
pened. How mortified they were to think that their 
best bed had broken with the teacher in it! 

“While the teacher boarded in a family, the 
housewife put company food on the table. We had 
a clean tablecloth and all the little extras — plenty 
of pie and cake and any other delicacies they might 
have or could scrape up. They would put my dinner 
in a basket for me to carry to the schoolhouse. In 
those days they never made sandwiches, but they 
sometimes gave us smoked beef that they had cured 
themselves. We did n’t have any roast beef. Salt 


80 


John Burroughs Talks 

pork was the standard meat. Yet, whatever else was 
lacking, if there was plenty of pie and cake, they 
thought you were fixed. 

“A number of big girls came to my school. I sup- 
pose they were drawn by some personal attraction 
in the teacher. They behaved well, and I never kept 
any of them after school, though they often used to 
linger in the doorway as if they wanted to stay. Yes, 
I noticed some rivalry among them as to which should 
stand highest in my consideration. One of them was 
older than I was and had been a teacher herself. 
Another of them later drew a five-thousand-dollar 
prize in a lottery. Then she married. Of course the 
sudden wealth was too much for her. The farm 
was n’t good enough any longer, and she shifted her 
home to New York, got into fast life, and went to the 
dogs. That money undid her. 

“At one of my boarding-places the woman was a 
great talker. I did n’t have to say anything. Her 
tongue would run on in a continuous stream of gos- 
sip as long as I was around. She was a good motherly 
woman, but she used to tire me dreadfully. 

“Then there was a house where the man used to 
try to make a Methodist of me. We would sit up 
discussing religion until after ten o’clock at night, 
which was very late in the country. He would pump 
me full of his views, with copious quotations of 
Bible texts. I was n’t as familiar with the Bible or 
theology as he was, and I could n’t do much but 


Teaching in the Groping Years 81 

listen to his dissertations. He was n’t a deep or par- 
ticularly attractive man. His appeal was on the 
score of a good bargain. If I wanted to save my bacon 
I must come into his fold. 

“Those were barren times, and rustic dwellers 
did n’t see much of literature except what they got 
out of their weekly paper. One man believed in 
witches, and he would tell me in a solemn strain of 
the wonderful things he’d seen and heard. 

“The most interesting character in the town was 
a blind miller. He owned a gristmill that his sons 
ran by day and he ran by night. He was quite a 
marvel. It was astonishing, the way his remaining 
senses were developed to take the place of sight. He 
could walk anywhere, even go to New York alone. 
He was able to select a man’s bags of grist just by 
feeling and never make a mistake. People said he 
could tell the color of a cow or horse simply by putting 
his hands on the animal. One night an old darky 
came to the mill and was stealing meal, when the 
blind man said, ‘There, Sam, you’ve got enough.’ 
It scared the darky most out of his skin. 

“I was often homesick, and I was glad when the 
term ended in October and I could go back to the 
old farm in Roxbury. I studied at an ‘Institute’ 
in Ashland the next winter. Three boys from my 
home neighborhood were teaching school near 
Plainfield, New Jersey, and when spring came I 
decided to try to get a position as teacher in the same 


82 John Burroughs Talks 

vicinity. I went by steamboat from Catskill to New 
York, and the rest of the way by railroad. I had 
never ridden on the cars before, and as I sat in my 
seat waiting for the train to start, I expected the cars 
would get into motion with a terrific jerk. So I held 
my hat on to prevent it from falling off. 

“I failed to get the job I sought and returned 
home. For several months I farmed it, and mean- 
while studied, when I had a chance. Then I went 
down to Ulster County where I'd taught before, 
and was asked to take my old school again. They 
had n't had very good luck with their teachers since 
I left. The scholars had been very mutinous, and 
half a dozen schoolmasters had come and gone, all 
pitched out by the boys. I was offered just double 
my former salary, and I agreed to teach from Sep- 
tember to April. I had no trouble. The big girls all 
came to school, and harmony prevailed generally. 

“ It was while teaching at Tongore then that I met 
Ursula North, who later became my wife. She lived 
five or six miles away in the next district, and I used 
to walk back and forth when I went to see her. One 
time I had to wallow home to my boarding-place 
through snow fully two feet deep. 

“When school closed I was a student for three 
months at Cooperstown Seminary, and after that 
helped on the farm till fall. Then I went out again 
into the world. ‘Go West, young man,' was the 
watchword in those times, and I borrowed fifty 


Teaching in the Groping Years 83 

dollars from my brother Curtis and went to north- 
western Illinois, where some friends I had known at 
Ashland were located. I taught there in the village 
of Buffalo Grove, near Freeport, for six or seven 
months. I received big pay out there — forty dollars 
a month, which was much more than I could have 
earned in the East. 

“All that part of Illinois was prairie country, and 
I got very fond of it. Much of the land had never 
been touched, but a great deal of this was ploughed 
while I was there. Acre after acre of black soil inter- 
woven with grass roots was turned up to the air. 
It was unlike anything I had seen hitherto. The 
sods were soft to the foot, and I used to walk over 
the ploughed land a long way, when I was not tied 
by school duties, just for the pleasure of it. 

“I liked to hear the booming of the prairie-hen. 
We had no such sound back home. It seemed to be 
floating in the air and to have no locality. There was 
something very charming and striking about it — 
this voice out of the horizon. I recall too how the. 
migratory waterfowl flew over us that fall — im- 
mense flocks of them. Sometimes the geese would 
come down in the uncut cornfields — fields where 
the upper half of the stalks had been removed and 
the rest left with the ears on to stand perhaps all 
winter. You could hear for a long distance the wings 
of the wild geese rattling among the dry stalks as 
the birds alighted. 


84 John Burroughs Talks 

“Several times I borrowed a little fowling-piece 
and hid in the corn and waited for the geese. When 
they came near enough so I could see their feet and 
eyes, I’d blaze away, but I did n’t hurt them any. 
I could n’t with that fowling-piece. Nobody had a 
good gun out there then. 

“If the geese stopped on the open prairie, acres of 
it would be brown with the feathered visitors. Once 
some of the young fellows of the village noticed a big 
flock accumulating so near that we thought we’d 
go out and get some. We waited till it was dark and 
started, armed with clubs, expecting that we could 
go right in among the birds and knock them down. 
But we walked and walked, and went far beyond 
where the flock had been and never saw a goose. 

“ We did n’t know that we could n’t approach 
a flock in the night. They keep sentinels out after 
the manner of a well-organized army, and at the 
least alarm they are off. They go like an express 
train when they once get started, and they travel at 
night just as well as they do by day. That’s the only 
wild-goose chase I ever was in. 

The prairie was very fascinating, and I have a 
great hankering to live again for a time in the West 
and hear the old sounds and get the old feeling. 

“I came back to my native region in the spring 
on account of ‘the girl I left behind me.’ It was 
pretty hard to stay even so long as I did in Illinois, 
though I got acquainted with girls there who con- 
soled me somewhat. 


Teaching in the Groping Years 85 

“I was still wearing my hair long, as did a good 
many young men of an independent turn of mind, 
but my betrothed objected to my untrimmed locks, 
and I had them shorn off. 

“After spending a few months on the old farm, 
I got a school in Ulster County at High Falls, and 
in September I married. I was only twenty and with 
hardly more dollars than years. My wedding ex- 
penses were ten dollars. I had to keep right on 
teaching, and my wife continued to live with her 
folks. 

“The school that I taught was sixteen miles from 
her home, and I would dismiss the pupils pretty early 
on Fridays and walk the long, lonely road, which was 
in the woods nearly all the way, to stay over Sunday 
with her. Monday I would start back at three 
o’clock in the morning through the night woods and 
get to my school in time to open it at nine. There 
was a certain wild, adventurous flavor about this 
tramping through the darkness that made it agree- 
able to me. But it was too arduous work for winter, 
and at the approach of snowtime my wife came and 
boarded with me. 

“There was a vacation period in the spring and 
early summer which I spent helping on the Roxbury 
farm, and then I got a school at Rosendale, a parish 
adjoining the one where I had been teaching before. 
My wife went home and I resumed my weekly walks 
back and forth. I boarded at the village hotel, and 


86 John Burroughs Talks 

there I fell in with the local harness-maker. He 
showed me an invention of his — a buckle with a 
sliding tongue. I got interested and gradually was 
induced to believe there was a fortune in it. I made a 
drawing of the buckle to send on to Washington for 
a patent. The harness-maker was very poor, and, in 
consideration of his agreeing to give me half the 
profits, I let him have the money to pay for patent- 
ing. The village doctor was interested too, and 
finally he and I bought out the man for a couple of 
hundred dollars. 

“Then I gave up my school and went to Newark, 
to interest some manufacturers in my buckle. But 
men who knew the business were shy of the buckle, 
and at length I made up my mind there was nothing 
in it. All this cost me a good deal of pain and anxious 
thought at the time. Now my money was gone, and 
I went to teaching again. The school was in East 
Orange, and I walked daily the few miles between 
it and the suburbs of Newark, where my wife and 
I began housekeeping in a three-room apartment. 

“She had long viewed with apprehension an 
aspiration I had developed to become a writer, and 
she persisted in urging me. to go into business, in 
spite of the failure I had made with the buckle. So 
at the end of the spring term, I looked for a business 
opening in New York. But my quest was not a suc- 
cess, and I soon retreated to my native mountains. 

“From the fall of 1860 until the spring of 1862 


Teaching in the Groping Years 87 

I taught at Marlborough, ten miles up the Hudson 
from Newburgh, and the next fall I got a school at 
Olive in Ulster County. I was n’t prospering, and 
presently, as a solution of life’s difficulties, I con- 
cluded to become a physician and began to read 
medicine in the office of the local doctor. 

“In December I had a chance to get better pay 
teaching at what is now Highland Falls, just south 
of West Point, and I took along my medical books 
and went there. But those books could n’t hold my 
attention after I began making use of the fine West 
Point Academy library, and I gave up the idea of 
being a doctor. My wife, who for some time had been 
staying at the Roxbury farm, joined me. and we re- 
sumed housekeeping. She was quite unwell during 
the early months of the new year, and, besides teach- 
ing. I was burdened with household duties and nurs- 
ing. 

“My school was the hardest one I had ever at- 
tempted to manage, and I took the most interest in 
it. There were a good many unruly boys, and I had 
a little scrimmage with one of the oldest of them — 
that is, I jerked him around pretty lively. I did n’t 
whip him, though a bundle of twigs was always kept 
handy in the room. But I was heartily ashamed of 
the impulsive anger I had shown, and I stood up 
before the pupils and said: ‘If I can’t keep school 
without such scenes. I will quit. I’m not here to 
thrash you, but to help you.’ 


88 


John Burroughs Talks 

“I went on in that vein for some minutes, and be- 
fore I finished I was weeping and they were weeping 
with me. They seemed to respect my motives, and 
we had lovely times after that. 

“Every Friday afternoon we had a little talk, en- 
tirely outside of the school routine. An old pupil who 
sometimes visits me says I once talked on architec- 
ture, and he ’s always remembered it. I used to ques- 
tion the pupils and have them question me. In all 
the school work, my great aim was to make the child 
think and see why a thing was so. They were very 
apt to repeat by rote what they learned in geometry, 
for instance. But I ’d change the problems so they ’d 
have to puzzle a way out on their own account. I 
wanted to cultivate the habit of original thinking, 
and every once in a while a boy would say : ‘Oh, I see! 
I see it now — never thought about it before.’ 

“I had a scheme of my own for teaching grammar. 
I wish I ’d written it out. It was a more vital way of 
approaching the subject — something to show the 
application of grammar to speech more intimately. 
All those rules and parsing never in the world im- 
pressed the children as having any relation to daily 
life. They might know every rule in the grammar and 
yet sit down and write a letter full of errors. 

“The Civil War was being fought, and the cost 
of living was rising. I asked the trustees to increase 
my pay, but they did n’t do so, and I promptly quit 
teaching with the intention of becoming a volunteer 


Teaching in the Groping Years 89 

soldier. I had never been content to look forward to 
making teaching my permanent and chief work in 
the world. I had grown tired of it. But now I was 
through.’’ 


VI 

October , 1895 

A TREASURY CLERK IN WASHINGTON 

I left the Hudson at Rondout and went by railroad 
far back into the Catskills to the little town of Rox- 
bury. Then I toiled on foot up a steep mile-and-a- 
half hill to the plain low farmhouse which was Bur- 
roughs’s early home. 

The house is on a bank by the roadside, and the 
terrace on which it stands is buttressed by a stout 
wall of stone that has a flight of steps built into it. 
A row of maples grows at the foot of the wall and 
shades the narrow yard. Right across the road, down 
the hill, is the horse-barn, but this does not alto- 
gether hide the view beyond of great heaving hills 
and distant blue heights, and of the valley that opens 
away southerly with its mowing-fields and pastures 
and patches of woodland, and its criss-crossing of 
stone walls. 

Behind the house is an old apple orchard, and up 
a steep hill in that direction is a sugar-bush of big 
gnarled trees. At the edge of the grove is a little gray 
shanty where the sap is boiled. 

Burroughs himself was at the farm, and I spent 
two days with him rambling about his familiar 
haunts. We visited the sugar-bush, the scene of 


A Treasury Clerk in Washington 91 

many of his youthful exploits with the family mus- 
ket, we gathered nuts in a neighboring beech wood, 
and we explored the brook where once he swam and 
fished. Most interesting of all, we followed the wind- 
ing road he had trodden so often on his way to and 
from the district school in the West Settlement. 
Nor did we stop till we came to the small rusty-red 
schoolhouse which he said looked just as it had forty- 
five years before. The children were having recess, 
and we went inside. The same old box desks were 
in use that had been there when he was a schoolboy. 
He found the very seat that long ago was his, and 
among the jackknife he wings on its pine boards dis- 
covered the initials he had cut — J. B. 

We had an excellent chance to talk on our walks, 
and also in the old farmhouse. I remember with 
particular pleasure an evening in the kitchen, where 
the farm family had gathered after the day’s work 
was done and the supper dishes had been cleared off 
the long table. Most of one morning Burroughs and 
I spent in the neat rag-carpeted sitting-room, be- 
side a wood fire burning in the sheet-iron stove to 
temper the chill of the windy autumn day. 

“I find it rather saddening to come back here to 
the old farm,” he said. “It’s like walking among 
graves — father gone, mother gone, everything so 
changed. Of course, it’s pleasing to be here, but 
it’s depressing too. When one reaches my age he 
sees the light of the afternoon sun over everything. 


92 


John Burroughs Talks 

There’s a pathos in visiting the old haunts, tinged 
with regret and remembrances. Yet, in spite of the 
changes, I still delight in coming back. I come 
three or four times every year. I feel I must — to 
sort of slake my thirst.” 

On another occasion, when he was talking about 
his youth, he remarked: “I liked to eat wild berries 
as well as pick them. But I found that huckleberries 
did n’t agree with me. They made me feel as blue as 
the berries themselves and as if I had n’t a friend in 
the world.” 

Is n’t it possible that the source of the melan- 
choly which often oppressed him in mature life 
was physical rather than mental, and that if his 
digestion had been better his brooding would have 
been less somber, if it did not vanish altogether? 
But whatever the shadows on his spirits, he could 
say on his eighty-third birthday that he had had a 
happy life, that his work had been play, and that he 
did not want a better world or better friends. 

In my own acquaintance with him, the melan- 
choly was never more than incidentally apparent. 
I should say that he radiated cheerfulness. But no 
doubt there was a difference when he was alone with 
his thoughts. 

On my autumn visit in the Catskills I mentioned 
to Burroughs that he had told me how he had turned 
his back on pedagogy, and asked him, “What next?” 

“While I was teaching in New Jersey,” he said. 


A Treasury Clerk in Washington 93 

“I met a young man named Allen. He had tastes 
similar to mine, and we became congenial friends. 
Presently he went to Washington, where he estab- 
lished himself in business as one of the proprietors 
of a rubber store, and from there he wrote frequent 
letters urging me to come and make Washington my 
home. One of his inducements, which particularly 
appealed to me, was that I would have a chance to 
meet Whitman, who was living there and whom he 
knew. 

“So, late in October, 1863, after breaking away 
from school- teaching, I journeyed to Washington, 
ready for something to turn up. I went with a 
strong feeling that if I got close to the scene of the 
military operations, I would go into the army. 

“Soldiering had a romantic as well as a patriotic 
appeal to me. However, when I learned that, even if 
I did enlist, I had small chance of getting to the 
field of action for months and might not get there 
at all, and when I saw how much the soldiers suffered, 
and how dirty they were, and how they were shipped 
on the trains herded like cattle, and when I ob- 
served the loads of wounded arriving from the 
battle-fields, the romance of war vanished and my 
militant enthusiasm wilted. I had n’t considered 
the hardships, but thought soldiering would be like 
a big hunt — an adventure in the woods. So I 
looked around for a different sort of employment. 

“The fellows in the Government departments 


94 John Burroughs Talks 

seemed to have a soft thing, and I set a little polit- 
ical machinery in motion to secure a department 
clerkship for myself. I got some letters of recom- 
mendation, and after considerable delay obtained 
a perfunctory endorsement of my application from 
the senators of my native State, and from the mem- 
ber of the House of Representatives my home dis- 
trict had elected. 

“After all this did n’t help me much, but in the 
end I was successful, and on January 4, 1864, I went 
to work as a clerk in the newly established Bureau 
of National Banks, at an annual salary of twelve 
hundred dollars. For most of the ten years that I 
was in Washington I had charge of an iron vault 
in the Treasury Building, where the new unsigned 
bank-bills were stored, and I kept track of the money 
that was put in and taken out. I was pretty good at 
figures, but I never was a first-rate clerk. I was too 
careless, and I had n’t a smart, quick, clerical way. 
I would get to thinking of other things than the de- 
tails of my work, and I ’d make mistakes. 

“After I secured this clerkship my wife joined 
me. We tried boarding, but that did n’t suit me. 
I am a born countryman who wants the green grass 
under his feet and I always had had a longing for 
ample grounds and the chance to have a home where 
I would be face to face with nature. So I began inves- 
tigating to see what I could do. I remember walking 
seven miles out in Maryland to look at a place that 


A Treasury Clerk in Washington 95 

I thought I might buy. My idea was to live there 
and grow stuff, and at the same time continue my 
work in Washington and go back and forth on the 
train. It seemed to me that the possession of a farm 
would be a good antidote to the Treasury Depart- 
ment, but the place was n't suitable. 

“Washington itself was very rustic, and there 
were market gardens in all the suburbs and even on 
Capitol Hill. Eventually I rented a house. It was a 
quaint brick structure two stories high, and stood 
where the great marble Senate Office building now 
is. On the premises, in the rear, was a little tenant 
house where a darky lived. Besides, there was a barn, 
and, what delighted me most of all, an acre of land. 
So I was able to keep a cow and chickens, and to 
grow cabbages and turnips and other garden truck. 

“I began to live a kind of rural life, and yet I 
could look up at the dome of the Capitol from behind 
the high board fence that shut in my domains. We 
sublet rooms enough to pay for the rent, and we had 
milk and eggs to sell, and people would come to the 
house to buy green stuff from the garden. Probably 
we realized a hundred dollars a year on our garden, 
besides supplying our own table; and I think we 
saved more than half my salary. 

“I hired a man to plough, but did the hoeing and 
digging myself, and picked our pears and apricots 
and gathered in the pumpkins and squashes, po- 
tatoes, strawberries, peas, and beans as they ripened. 


96 John Burroughs Talks 

The Treasury was not much more than a mile away, 
and I did n’t have to leave to walk down there until 
half-past eight. I worked in the garden before I 
started, and again when I returned, after being set 
free at four in the afternoon from my daily task of 
guarding the vault. 

“But I did n’t spend all my leisure in the garden. 
From the beginning of my Washington life I took 
every opportunity to get out in the woods and study 
the birds and be with nature. Every pleasant Sun- 
day I went to church in the woods, and I was often 
among the trees during the week. I think I walked 
most in winter. The summers were too hot. I only 
had to go two miles to get to real pine woods. 

“Usually I walked alone, but sometimes a con- 
genial companion or two accompanied me. One 
Saturday afternoon in June a chum and I camped 
on High Island, and the next day we walked up 
along the shore of the Potomac to Dam One. The 
dam was low, with tranquil water above it and 
foaming rocky rapids below. On the upper side of 
the dam we went in swimming and started for the 
other shore, but we miscalculated. We had no idea 
of the pull of the water, and as soon as we were well 
out in the stream we were startled to see that we 
were being drawn toward the dam. We tried to 
swim up, but it was too late. The strength of the 
water was amazing. I felt as if ten thousand boa 
constrictors had got hold of me and were pulling. 


A Treasury Clerk in Washington 97 

“Over the dam we went, and I found myself 
struggling in an eddy just below. It’s astonishing 
how such a fluid substance as water can drag and 
twist you, and how utterly powerless you are in its 
grip. I seemed to be no more than a straw. As I 
whirled in the eddy I came in contact with a rock 
that jutted above the surface of the stream. I 
clasped it and clung there desperately till I got my 
breath. The water had taken the tuck all out of me. 
I had no more strength than a baby. It was dis- 
tressing to feel so weak and limp. At last I dragged 
myself up on the rock. 

“My chum had been carried down the rapids to 
a pool, where he contrived to get ashore a good deal 
bruised and exhausted. When he had somewhat re- 
covered, he came up opposite me on the bank. The 
roar of the waters was too loud for us to speak to 
each other, but I motioned to him that I would swim 
down the rapids; and by his motions he made me 
understand he thought that was too perilous. Then . 
he hustled into his clothes and ran off to secure 
means for rescuing me. 

“There I sat perched like a gull on top of the rock 
with the sun burning my back; and a whole blessed 
hour passed before a boat was procured. This was 
anchored immediately above the dam, the end of a 
rope was thrown down to me, and I was pulled up 
over the dam to safety. 

“I mentioned having a cow. We had three, one 


98 John Burroughs Talks 

after another. Chloe was the first. Her keep did n’t 
cost much because I turned her out each day to 
range free on the commons. Cows had the freedom 
of the city then, and you would see dozens of them 
grazing where now are solid blocks of buildings. 

“Sometimes a neighbor’s cow would get into my 
garden and eat the corn and cabbages. There was 
one particularly troublesome cow that belonged to 
an old Irishwoman who lived near by. She would 
come and butt and butt at my garden gate until 
the latch slid. Then the gate would swing wide open 
and in she’d walk. Naturally, when I caught her 
devouring my vegetables, that cow and I would 
have a scrimmage. The first time I found her tres- 
passing, I hustled her out and sent a kick after her 
that failed to reach its mark and nearly unjoin ted 
my leg. 

“But she kept coming. I remember one night 
well. I heard the cow munching in the garden, and 
out I went and cornered her and whaled her till she 
bawled. Yes, I thrashed the old cow pretty hard, 
and she bawled tremendously. It made the Irish- 
woman who owned her mad, and we had some words 
over the matter. Finally, I put a different fastening 
on the gate, and the next time the cow came she 
rubbed and butted in vain. She was much perplexed 
and wondered why the blamed old gate would n’t 
open. 

“The neighbors’ pigs troubled me, too. They 


A Treasury Clerk in Washington 99 

would root under the fence and eat my potatoes and 
pumpkins. They ran free, just as the cows and goats 
did, all over Capitol Hill and picked up a precarious 
existence. Those were the lax Southern days of 
Washington’s development. 

“One afternoon, when I came home from the 
office and went to my chicken-house, there lay a fox 
right on the floor eating a chicken. He leaped to his 
feet and dashed out of the door, and I saw him run 
up the square and into a house. He was a tame fox 
that belonged to a man who lived there. 

“ On a later occasion I had an experience with two- 
legged thieves. It was in the fall of the year, and I 
had about a dozen chickens and one turkey. I ’d 
seen so much of them that I knew every individual 
in the flock. They ’d follow me round as I hoed the 
ground, and were so tame they’d let me take them 
in my hands. I got up in the gray dawn one morning 
and looked into the chicken-house. It was perfectly 
silent, and I said to myself, ‘Well, where are the 
chickens?’ 

“Then it flashed over me that they’d been stolen, 
and I was a good deal cut up, I can tell you. We had 
a colored girl working for us. She went home nights. 
When she came that morning and learned of our loss, 
she said: ‘I heard chickens holler in the night. They 
were being brought into a house right next to where 
I live.’ 

“I went to investigate, and there, in the basement 


100 John Burroughs Talks 

of an oldish house on the edge of town, I found my 
chickens. The moment I opened the door I saw them 
lying on the floor before me. They ’d been killed and 
dressed, but the thieves had left the heads on. If 
they ’d cut off the heads, I would n’t have had any 
clue. As it was, no one could fool me about those 
dead chickens. I knew the countenance of every one 
of them. Two colored men were in the room, but 
when I asked about the chickens, they told me I’d 
have to talk with the boss, and they hurried out to 
get him. 

“They were gone so long that I got lonesome and 
went and brought a policeman. I convinced him 
that the chickens and the turkey were my property, 
and he let me take them home. There were some 
blankets, a buffalo robe, and other things in the 
basement. The policeman concluded they were 
stolen and he carried them off. 

“We lived on chickens for a while after that; and 
what we could n’t eat we sold, or gave away to friends. 
I did n’t raise any more poultry as long as I was in 
Washington. 

“The first summer of my stay there the Con- 
federates made a raid that brought the fighting to 
within seven miles of the Capital. I volunteered to 
help in a hospital; but I could n’t bear the sight of 
blood — I was always rather chicken-hearted that 
way — and after an hour or two with the surgeons 
I almost collapsed and had to rush out into the open 
air. 


A Treasury Clerk in Washington 101 

“I saw Lincoln a number of times while I lived in 
Washington. I pressed his big hand at a reception 
one night in 1864. It was one of those rather fre- 
quent occasions when the public was allowed to file 
in at the White House and greet the President. He 
looked disheveled and careworn. I thought I must 
pause a little and pass some compliment, but I felt 
him pull me right along. 

“Many years afterward I told Roosevelt of that, 
and he said: ‘By Jove! I’ve had to do the same 
thing in order to keep the crowd moving and save 
time. I’ve done so much handshaking on some oc- 
casions that the next morning my hand would be all 
swelled up.’ 

“On the day of Lincoln’s second inaugural I went 
off to ramble in the woods. I’ve often chided my- 
self since for doing so. I found a wild dog with pups 
in a hollow tree, but missed the inaugural. 

“Politically I was one of Lincoln’s supporters, 
and in that respect was not in accord with my home 
people. I stood alone in a family of copperheads. 

“Like many others I had gradually come to have 
implicit faith in Lincoln, though he was perhaps a 
little too meek and long-suffering and let the army 
generals and Government officials run over him. 

“One morning just as my wife had finished getting 
breakfast that old Irishwoman who owned the 
trespassing cow came in and told us the President 
had been shot the evening before at a theater. 


102 John Burroughs Talks 

“‘Git out!’ I said. ‘What are you talking about? 
I don’t believe it.’ 

“But I saw she was in earnest and I ran out to 
buy a newspaper. We did n’t eat any breakfast that 
morning. 

“Presently I went to the Treasury office, and 
found every one dumbfounded. Work was sus- 
pended. Lincoln was dead. 

“I had a little horse and wagon, and in the after- 
noon I started to drive out three or four miles to get 
some strawberry plants. But I ran into a picket line 
and could n’t get through. The Government officials 
were taking precautions. They did n’t know what 
was up. There was great excitement. 

“We’ve been having a good deal of discussion 
lately over Barnard’s statue of Lincoln. I used to 
see Lincoln, and he was no such grotesque country 
clodhopper as Barnard represents him. The statue 
is a caricature. 

“In the autumn of 1867 my wife and I left our 
rented place and went to live in a ten-room brick 
house that had been built for us in the suburbs. 
There was an ample front yard, but only a little 
garden patch — probably fifty feet square — where 
I raised a few tomatoes and some corn. ’T was n’t 
very good land. There ’d been an old Catholic ceme- 
tery on the spot, and what with the original digging 
of the graves and the more recent removing of the 
bodies, dirt had been thrown up on top that ought 


A Treasury Clerk in Washington 103 

to have been below. The ground had been blessed, 
but its holiness was n’t conducive to good vege- 
table crops. Nothing could overcome the natural 
sterility of that gravelly soil from the depths. 

“The removal of the bodies hadn’t been done 
very thoroughly, and when we were putting in a 
cistern we unearthed two coffins. They were de- 
cayed, but not broken, and we buried them along- 
side of the fence. While we were building the chim- 
ney and had completed it up to the second floor, it 
settled one night nearly two feet. Evidently, it was 
right over a grave and had gone down on the body. 
We kept on with the chimney. I thought it would 
tumble, at the resurrection, but I knew I would n’t 
be in Washington then; so the man under the chim- 
ney could n’t sue me. There he was held down by 
that great weight, and I expected to hear him groan, 
but I never did, and I never saw any spooks on the 
premises. We rented the upper part of the house, and 
the place was all paid for in less than two years. 

“As time went on, my position in the Treasury 
Department became less and less to my liking, al- 
though my salary had gradually been advanced to 
twenty-one hundred dollars, and I had become chief 
of the Organization Division of National Banks. I 
must grant that Uncle Sam was a very easy master. 
He paid us well and did n’t insist on our working 
very hard. I could even go out for a stroll at certain 
times in my short working day and be gone for a half- 


104 John Burroughs Talks 

hour or more. Besides, I had a month’s vacation 
each summer that I spent in my old home region. 
But while my task was not especially irksome, I am 
not a man of methodical habits, and restraint of any 
kind is rather disagreeable to me. I ’m sure I could n’t 
stand it at all the way things are now in the Treasury. 
It’s run about like a big factory. After ten years’ 
service I quit and went back to York State.” 


VII 

March , 1896 
IDEALS IN EDUCATION 

The previous year Burroughs had built the woodland 
cabin which has become so well known under the 
name of Slabsides, and in January I received a letter 
from a Poughkeepsie woman with this preliminary 
legend at the top of the first page: 

“ Fools rush m where angels fear to tread.” 

She went on to say that she had a “beautiful 
scheme” and “would it not be a charming idea for 
Mr. Burroughs’s friends to present him on his next 
birthday with such articles, useful or beautiful, as 
would make the little house a perpetual delight to 
him? It is well to build monuments to men, but I 
think it much better to put a little ante-mortem 
brightness into their lives. Yours with presumption.” 

But I replied that it was quite clear to me that 
Burroughs would want to furnish his woodland 
home himself. 

I wrote to him in March suggesting a visit, and his 
response was: “I may have to entertain you at Slab- 
sides, as the girl has gone and Mrs. B. is ill and in bad 
humor. But I shall have things there for our comfort, 
and we will have a winter camp and much talk.” 

That suited me perfectly. The weather was sharp 


106 John Burroughs Talks 

and the ground still snow-covered at the time of my 
visit. Burroughs walked with me from the railroad 
station up the western highway a short distance, and 
then along a rutted, irregular cart-path in the woods 
to his cabin on a shoulder of rock at the border of 
a swamp about a mile and a half from Riverby. The 
outer walls of the cabin were of bark-covered slabs 
nailed on horizontally. This gave the structure a 
little the look of a log house. The roof extended down 
on one side to shelter a broad piazza that had shaggy 
cedar posts. 

As soon as I stepped inside the door I was greeted 
by the pleasant woodsy odor of the birch which had 
been used freely in the cabin architecture, and by the 
faint smoky odor of the fire blazing and crackling in 
the fireplace. 

It was a house of three rooms, two upstairs and 
one downstairs, but a partition of yellow birch sap- 
lings ran half across this lower apartment, making 
virtually one room more. The inner walls were of 
planed boards, and the cracks between these boards 
were covered by split birch saplings. Beams, rafters, 
studding, and the rest of the framework timbers were 
mostly exposed to view; and all these were made of 
logs with the bark on. In the birch alcove was a sort 
of rustic bed of state made of small tree-trunks and 
slabs. The effect was original, though rude and raw 
rather than charming. Brushy woodland and steep 
cliffs were round about, except where the cultivated 





A Flowering Bush at the Margin of the Summ/p 




April at Slabsides 



The Interior of the Cabin 






Ideals in Education 107 

swamp made a break. The outlook from the cabin 
was hardly beautiful, but you did get a sense of 
picturesque seclusion. 

The day was waning, and Burroughs at once be- 
gan to get supper by setting certain things to warm 
on the hearth and conveying certain other things 
from a cupboard to the table. 

After supper we washed and wiped the dishes, 
brushed off the table with the broom, and did such 
other tidying up as seemed essential. Then we sat 
down before the fire with a consciousness of duty 
well performed, and gave ourselves up to talk. The 
oil in the lamp ran low after a while, but that did not 
matter. We put out the light, and, in the gloom, the 
flames in the fireplace seemed cheerier than ever. A 
wind was blowing in variable gusts, making music 
among the bare tree-twigs and about the chimney 
mouth; and when it was from just the right direction 
the low roar of a distant waterfall came pulsing 
through the air. 

Presently we put all freezable things on the stone 
mantel over the fire and retired for the night to the 
rustic bed in the birch alcove. 

The place was pretty frosty the next morning, 
and even after the fire was well started our backs 
were chilled through, though our faces were perhaps 
being baked at the same moment. 

One of the things we talked of on this visit was 
education, and Mr. Burroughs said: 


108 John Burroughs Talks 

“The children of the country have come much 
more to the front of late years. They attract more 
attention and are a good deal more in evidence than 
they were in my boyhood. Way back in the past, 
in England, the children used to eat at a side table. 
They were kept subordinate and got their chops 
slapped if they interrupted their elders. That was 
carrying things to an extreme, but there was some 
sense in it, nevertheless. 

“ When I was a boy, if we children on the way to 
school met an older person we would form in line by 
the roadside, and the boys would take off their hats 
and bow, and the little girls would drop a curtsy. 
We enjoyed doing it. I remember, too, that as we 
went out of school we would turn toward the teacher 
and say, ‘Good afternoon, ma’am.’ 

“Nowadays, at the end of the session a wild huzza 
and howl issues on the still air, and the children rush 
forth for all the world as if the schoolhouse had taken 
a puke. You’d think a lot of yahoos were let loose. 
And when you meet a growing boy to-day, you don’t 
get a quiet, polite bow. No, he saunters past without 
noticing you, or perhaps calls out at you insolently 
and throws an apple or potato at you the moment 
your head is turned. I’m inclined to think the old 
way was better. A certain amount of control and 
show of respect for authority is good for the race, 
and I lament the decay of these things. 

“It is a fault that all our boys have — this want 


Ideals in Education 109 

of humility, of modesty. They are not deferential 
enough. It’s in the air. Whether something better 
will come out of it, I don’t know. 

“There’s one little boy in my neighborhood who 
always doffs his hat when he meets me, and his face 
beams, and it tickles me to see him. His deference 
is the effect of foreign parentage. He’s a little 
Swedish boy. He’s polite because he does n’t know 
any better. He has n’t acquired our Yankee inde- 
pendence yet. Of course I would n’t want that we 
should have the air of fawning — dare n’t say your 
soul ’s your own — that is characteristic of the 
lower classes in the presence of the higher in some 
foreign countries. But I do like to see a feeling of 
consideration, not simply toward fancied superiors, 
but a show of respect toward all. 

“A good deal of our boyish rowdyism is due to 
the parents’ neglect or partisanship. They neither 
control their children themselves nor allow others to 
do so. If one of the children gets into trouble any- 
where, they take the child’s part without any effort 
to get at the real facts and quite independent of 
reason. For example, if one of their boys has a row 
with the teacher, you find the mother or father at the 
schoolhouse next day boiling with rage and abusing 
the schoolma’am. 

“One day, when my dog and I were going along 
the road, a neighbor’s boy threw stones at the dog. 
I spoke sharply to him, and he replied with some 


110 John Burroughs Talks 

piece of sauciness. At that I caught the boy and 
I cuffed his ears well. The following morning his 
father came out to the road as I was passing and 
stopped me. He was as mad as he could stick and 
denounced me for laying hands on his boy. But I told 
him just how the case stood, and that if his boy did 
the same thing again, he would get cuffed again. 
That was when my own boy was small, and I said, 
‘If my boy is ever insolent to you, I want you to take 
your cane and thrash him on the spot.’ 

“There’s a good deal of fancy and feigning and 
make-believe about children. They have the same 
strongly developed trait there was in the pre-Adamite 
man for endowing things with life. I have it myself. 
If my hat blows away, I feel like jumping on it and 
punishing it. 

“I remember how an uncle of mine was taking the 
honey out of a hive once, when a bee stung him. 
He was so angry he did n’t stop to think, and he 
kicked the hive clear across the yard. That was in- 
stinct. There was no sense in it. 

“You might think the bees would attack him 
then, but they did n’t. If you have to do with bees, 
you’re safe as soon as you break the comb and set 
the honey running. That makes them lose their wits. 
They all gather on the wasting honey and load them- 
selves with it. Their greed is like that of the miser 
whose house burns. ‘Oh, I must save my gold!’ he 
cries, and he grabs all he can carry of it. 


Ideals in Education 111 

“If I’m going to cut a bee-tree, I cut vigorously 
till I get a little of the honey flowing. Then the bees 
are demoralized. I’ve never been stung once, and 
I ’ve cut down fully a dozen bee-trees. The man who 
stands around in the background is the one that is 
stung. A bee comes buzzing about him, and he dodges 
and hits at it, and the bee stings him as soon as it gets 
a fair crack at him. 

“You know it’s so with other things. If you find 
an ugly dog in your path, walk right up to him. Then 
the dog says, ‘Well, this man must have business 
here.’ 

“The man who edges off and looks for the people 
of the house gets bit. I don’t know that a bold front 
would be very effective with a mad bull, though. 

“A boy is a savage in his love of noise. He likes 
to make discordant sounds. It does n’t disturb his 
sense of harmony, no matter how harsh and violent 
the sounds are. There was one while when the boys 
in the vicinity where I lived would take oyster-cans 
or something the sort and tie them with a string 
to a stick and whirl them around their heads and 
make the most horrible noise you can imagine. Fi- 
nally the people complained to the police and had it 
suppressed. No one else could stand it, but the boys 
gloated over it. As the boy grows older, he gets hu- 
manized and educated, and his aboriginal savagery 
wears off. Still, I don’t suppose we’ve always got 
to wait for it to wear off. A right feeling about things 


112 John Burroughs Talks 

can be awakened earlier, no doubt, if you are judi- 
cious. 

“Children are often unthinkingly cruel. They 
need to have their sympathies aroused. When my 
boy was a little fellow, three or four years old, I used 
to go to a neighbor’s in the early morning every day 
for milk. On one occasion I brought the boy a hand- 
ful of nuts and said I picked them up on the ground 
under a tree where a red squirrel sat on a limb and 
scolded me all the time. When I told how badly the 
squirrel felt over my carrying off the nuts, the boy 
was as much incensed as if I’d been stealing. He 
threw away all the nuts in his hand and exclaimed, 
‘I won’t have one of them!’ 

“Every spring I go and pick some orchids in a cer- 
tain secluded spot near my Riverby house, but I 
don’t let people know where they grow. If I did, 
they’d all be pulled up in a single season, and that 
would be the end of them. The variety is uncom- 
monly rare and beautiful, and it’s a pleasure to see 
them blooming there in the dense growth of ferns, 
weeds, and poison sumac. 

“I wish the children could be cured of the greedi- 
ness that would exterminate all our wild flowers. If 
they could it would be a decidedly good thing. But 
when they come across flowers they fancy, their way 
is to grub them up — all there are in sight, or till 
their hands are full. They seem to like bright color, 
and they reach for the gay blossoms. They’ll pick 


Ideals in Education 113 

ten thousand blossoms and have not a green leaf 
among them. The habit of purposeless or careless 
destruction is a bad one. It is barbarism to deface a 
beautiful page of nature. 

“I think the love of nature as it is found in a 
mature person has to be acquired. You can’t ex- 
pect a boy to have the same kind of feeling for it. 
He has n’t much sentiment. He ’s full of sap and 
activity. There’s no ruin there, no scars, no regrets. 
Children love nature just as they do apples and 
cherries and sweets. They like to be under the trees 
and to follow along the brooks. Their enjoyment is 
not aesthetic nor artistic, and it would be a mistake 
to try to develop such enjoyment in any set or 
mechanical way. There’s a difference in children. 
Many of them never will have any marked feeling for 
nature, however long they live. It ’s like the religious 
instinct, which some have and some don’t. It has to 
be inborn. 

“Children get too much coddling nowadays, es- 
pecially in families that have money. Their parents 
make the mistake of over-doing, and lose sight of 
the virtue of simplicity. The youngsters have such 
a multiplicity off things bought for their amusement 
that they are surfeited by them. I know boys who, 
it seems to me, are being altogether spoiled by their 
parents’ mistaken care and kindness. If they were 
in my charge, I’d bring ’em right down to first 
principles. They should have no guns, no bicycles. 


114 John Burroughs Talks 

They should eat plain food and sleep on a hard bed 
at night and be given plenty of farmwork. 

“ Yes, work is a mighty good thing for a boy. If 
leisure and play fill his time, his pleasure, after all, 
is pale. It’s like living on pie. The boy who does 
that does n’t relish his bread and meat; nor the pie 
either in a little while. Work makes everything 
about him sweet — the water, air, elements. Men- 
tal work alone is n’t enough. He must be taught to 
do things with his hands. When my boy was n’t 
over fifteen years old, he could knit a shad-net, go 
out in his boat and cast the net, pick it up, take out 
the shad — everything; eat the shad, too! He 
could row a boat with a great deal more skill than 
I could. 

“We all ought to be able to work effectively 
with our hands, and I believe in having manual 
training in the schools. One day I had an expert 
chopper come to cut down some trees that were too 
close to my study. I took an axe and helped, and 
the way I swung it fairly surprised the man. But 
I could chop well because I had learned how when 
I was a boy. 

“I’m dreadfully afraid that all this catering to 
children in literature is unhealthy. There are books 
by the hundred written for them every year. It’s 
better to have few books than many. I would try to 
avoid exciting, stimulating, and unnatural stories. 
Dana’s ‘Two Years Before the Mast’ is a book of 


Ideals in Education 115 

the right sort. It’s good for any boy who’s not 
spoilt. It’s written by an author who’s not thinking 
about style. You feel the faithfulness of the man. 
He wants to tell you just what his experiences on 
the sea had been. 

“I have been asked to write schoolbooks to help 
children to love nature, but I don’t see my way to it. 
To stimulate a love of nature as a feeling and a senti- 
ment is all right, but to make it a task — there ’s 
no good in that. I would n’t even teach botany to 
children till they had an interest in the plants. 

“I did n’t attempt to teach my boy flowers, 
birds, or anything else — as a task. If he asked 
for information, or in some way had his interest 
aroused, I was glad to help. I fished with him, I 
worked with him, I walked with him. In an in- 
direct way he picked up a great deal of knowledge 
and he found out things I did n’t know myself. 

“One of the most charming sights I see in the 
spring is the child going to school with its hands full 
of flowers. I always respond to that. Yet it is n’t 
a clearly defined love for the beautiful that prompts 
the flower-gathering. There is only a vague feeling 
behind. When the child brings in the flowers, if 
the teacher talks about them and tells her pupils 
something about them, that is a very good way of 
imparting knowledge. 

“Let children soak themselves in the atmosphere 
of nature. Don’t stick the knowledge on the outside. 


116 John Burroughs Talks 

Let them absorb it. What we want is the love of 
nature. If we have that it deepens our enjoyment 
of life. 

“I believe in going to nature at any time rather 
than to books. A while ago I visited a select boys’ 
school in New York City. One of the teachers and 
I walked in Central Park with the pupils and I 
helped them to identify the live birds we saw. That 
method is always in order. That’s the way the 
Greeks taught. They walked and talked. After our 
walk we visited the Natural History Museum. You 
know that a great many different kinds of woods are 
shown there. We talked about those, and the boys 
asked me questions. One boy pointed out the fact 
that while some of the tree-sections had the old knots 
in evidence clear to the heart, others were free from 
them. He knew that every tree must have had knots 
at some time all the way up the trunk. He had asked 
a fair question, and I explained that certain trees had 
the power of absorbing the knots. There are the pine 
and the hemlock, for instance — they sponge out 
their record. They climb, and pull up the ladder 
after them. 

“The child who’s only taught a lot of bare facts 
comes away from school without any love of books 
or of knowledge. Really, the things the children 
learn at school don’t amount to much. Heavens! 
it’s the teaching how to think and the imparting of 
love of knowledge that are important. The rest is 


Ideals in Education 117 

only incidental. It’s always been a crying want — • 
teachers who will inspire. It always will be, I sup- 
pose. Children are taught in a mechanical way in- 
stead of a vital way. There are n’t enough teachers 
who have enthusiasm. 

“A woman in the West once sent me some manu- 
script about birds and outdoor subjects. I gave it 
to my boy and asked him to read it. When he 
finished I said, ‘ Well, what do you think of it? ’ 

“T think she makes too much fuss/ he replied. 
‘I like the real thing.’ 

“You see, unless we are quiet and simple, whether 
we teach or write, ideas are lost sight of, and you have 
only the rattle of the words. 

“The way they teach literature in the colleges 
is calculated to kill any liking for it that one may 
happen to have before he goes to them. It seems to 
me I would lose my affection for Shakespeare if 
I had to dissect him and find out the meaning of 
every word and expression. I want to ride buoy- 
antly over the waves. I want to feel the wind and 
the motion — not talk about them. You can’t teach 
literature by bearing on. You can’t show the charm 
of a book by the pressure of mere intellectual force 
on it. You’ve got to approach it in a different way. 
You must be fluid. 

“All I should hope to do, if I were a teacher, 
would be to give the student the key to the best 
literature. We would read books together. We 


118 John Burroughs Talks 

would read good books and we would read poor 
books. I would say: ‘Well, we won’t talk. We’ll 
read and discover the quality. Here’s a poor book. 
Don’t you see that it is, as you read? It’s over- 
drawn. ’T is n’t delicate.’ 

“I would get at books in their sentiment and 
general character, not in their details. If you tear a 
piece of literature all to bits, you have n’t the thing 
itself any more. 

“Really, the nature teaching in the schools is only 
another form of cram. What the students get from 
their books is likely to be no good at all. I would 
teach nature to them out of doors, and show them 
how to use their eyes, how to discriminate, how to 
see straight. I would have them listen to the birds 
and pick out their individual voices; and I’d have 
them observe the plants, know how they look, and 
where they grow. It is a liking for the open air and 
for the wild creatures and the green things growing, 
that we want to stimulate. 

“There is a simplicity and calmness in nature 
that we ought to have more of in our homes. I 
think it is a great point to be quiet in color and 
decoration. You don’t want the stove in your kit- 
chen to be all decked out in nickel like a barbarian 
chief. It would fatigue you to look at it. If you go 
into a stove store and see all these modern stoves, 
it has the same effect on the eye as harsh sounds on 
the ear. I want a stove to hold its tongue — to be 
inconspicuous and not intrude. 


Ideals in Education 119 

“It’s the same way with wall-paper. If you see a 
sample that makes you exclaim, ‘Oh, ain’t that 
pretty!’ that’s just what you don’t want. The right 
thing is something that will simply give your walls 
tone and atmosphere. Too much definition in deco- 
ration is disturbing. After a while it wearies you. 
But the country people and the masses, whose 
sensibilities are blunt, want something striking. 

“There was a man who lived a short distance back 
from Riverby in a beautiful little house with a small 
wood-colored barn adjoining it and pine trees be- 
hind it. I used to enjoy looking at the place when 
I passed. But by and by he painted the house yel- 
low — a raw, garish yellow — and spoilt it all. It 
was ugly. It was a blotch on the landscape. Yet he 
thought it was pretty — thought it was nice! 

“It seems as if we never would be educated up to 
the point where we would see that the homely things 
are best. Still, if the beauty of simplicity was 
vigorously preached, and was taught in the schools, 
and if the local papers would take the matter up 
when a man paints his house offensively and show 
where the fault lay, the public might after a while 
get the idea through their heads. I’m not sure, 
though, that the local papers have much better feel- 
ing for harmonies than the populace. 

“In fact, the newspapers in general don’t measure 
up to their opportunities. They have been losing 
influence for years back — particularly the papers 


120 John Burroughs Talks 

published in the big cities. Some of them sold them- 
selves to the devil long ago. There are certain ones 
so bad I would n’t have them in my house. 

“The Sunday editions of the city papers are a 
great nuisance. You get paper enough to make a 
bedquilt. and the reading is mostly trash. The col- 
umns are just filled with insignificant happenings all 
over the country. 

“Yes, the majority of the newspapers, in what 
they print and in typography, fall far short of good 
taste. There are the ‘funny’ pictures they print — in 
the average paper those pictures are an abomination. 
The only thing that redeems a caricature is wit. Of 
course some of the pictures have wit, but most of 
the rude exaggerations are no better than what a 
boy does on his slate with his pencil — not so good, 
for they are more artificial than the boy’s work. 
There ’s' no wit in simply distorting the human form 
and making ears as big as barn doors and a nose as 
long as your arm. Yet I suppose people grin over 
them and think they are funny. 

“There will have to come a great reform in our 
newspapers. They will be much more compact, and 
will publish news and nothing else. We shall be 
given less gossip and be spared that same old story 
with details day after day of how John Smith eloped 
with Mary Ann. 

“The editorials won’t be so long-winded, nor 
have such an air of infallibility. What do editorials 


Ideals in Education 121 

amount to, anyway? Oftener than not an editorial 
is written by a man of no real convictions, but who’s 
paid for expressing the opinions that appear in print. 
We’ve gone through the juvenile stage of flatulency 
and gas. But present-day editorial writing is as if 
a man’s tongue had grown till it hung to the ground 
and wagged all the time. He’d better get it back 
in his mouth. He should learn to see facts as they 
are and state them as they are. 

“Once in a while I’ve had to talk to the young 
women at their colleges, and I try to stimulate their 
interest in things as much as I can. I don’t dump a 
lot of technicalities on them. I try to find out how 
closely they observe. For instance, I tell them about 
the dogtooth violet. It’s a kind of lily, and grows 
from a bulb six or eight inches down in the ground. 
‘This bulb,’ I say, ‘starts on the ground’s surface. 
How does it get down there where we find it? I think 
I know, but do you?’ 

“I give them a hint and let them follow it up if 
they will. I let them teach themselves, and I let the 
work be done with love, not as a duty. 

“After the indoor talk we go out for a walk. At 
one college we were to make an early start, and by 
five o’clock in the morning forty or fifty girls were 
on my doorstep — a great pool of girls bound not 
to miss their walk. When I heard them whispering 
and moving around, out I came, and we began our 
ramble. They were so anxious to hear everything 


122 John Burroughs Talks 

I said, that they crowded close after me. In fact, 
they were stepping on my heels all along the way. 
But that did n’t matter. I had stout shoes on. 

“The ear can be taught to discriminate among 
sounds just as the sense of touch gives us varied im- 
pressions through our finger-tips. I think I do this 
discriminating unconsciously. If I hear a sound, it 
requires no effort to decide what it is — whether the 
cry, song, or call of a bird or the drone of some insect. 
Every sound has a meaning. You must be able to 
take a hint. That is the great secret of observing 
nature. You must see what is going on, and draw 
conclusions. 

“Some months ago I visited the grave of Phillips 
Brooks at Mount Auburn Cemetery, and while I was 
there I found a bird’s nest right at the foot of his 
grave. What led to my finding the nest was the cry 
of a bird in distress, and when I looked about I saw 
a little chickadee with food in its beak. That was 
hint enough. Then I looked again, and I saw an iron 
gate-post with a hole rusted just above a hinge, and 
inside was the nest. 

“One day I went for a walk with the girls of 
Wheaton Seminary. I would call their attention 
to the birds, their flight, habits, nests. We would 
analyze the notes we heard, and from the medley of 
sounds that nature is full of pick out such bird 
voices as we could recognize. In one wood we heard 
a rare bird, the solitary vireo, singing. He was up 


Ideals in Education 123 

among the tree-tops, and there was a touch of anxi- 
ety in his song. I knew he must have a nest some- 
where near, and I said, ‘Now we’ll explore and see 
if we can find that nest. ’ 

“We were among the pines, and the spot was like 
a cathedral, cool and deep-shadowed. One of the 
girls discovered the nest. She was a country girl, 
and she had sharp eyes. The nest was on a drooping 
limb there in the dim aisles of the forest, and I 
reached up with a stick and pulled the limb down. 
The female was on the nest, and she flew out only 
at the last moment. The nest was exquisitely 
beautiful, and after the girls had admired it, I let 
the branch gently resume its old position. The girls 
were full of enthusiasm over this exploit, and the 
more so because they had found a nest that I had not 
found before myself. 

“Girls are always more responsive than boys in 
such ways. Boys think it more manly to show an 
interest in boats, gunning, and baseball. Girls are 
keen-eyed, and they have a certain delicacy that 
boys lack. 

“I think our American women tend more to sim- 
plicity than they once did. Yet it’s remarkable how 
they run after fashion, and befrizzle and bedeck 
themselves. There’s a lack of seriousness as com- 
pared with the men. I went to a boys’ school com- 
mencement the other day where there was a military 
parade. The parade was a beautiful sight. I was 


124 John Burroughs Talks 

charmed with it. But when I glanced around to see 
what the rest of the people were doing, I found that 
the women were mostly looking at each other’s rigs. 
That’s a little thing, perhaps, but it only takes a 
straw to show which way the wind blows. 

“Nevertheless, tight lacing and paint and powder 
apparently have had their day, and there’s not the 
former fear of a tanned face and hands, and of being 
seen doing outdoor tasks. One year a Vassar girl 
came to a farm near Riverby and got a job helping 
gather the grapes. She was a real worker, and she 
became tanned and strong and secured an added 
store of health and vitality. She had been taught to 
run, and she could run like a deer, and gracefully too. 

“In my school-teaching days I knew an artist’s 
wife who was a very beautiful woman. She took es- 
pecial pride in her fine complexion, and she would n’t 
go outdoors between sun and sun for fear of blemish- 
ing it. Her husband spent much of his time in the 
open air painting the beauties of nature, and here 
was his wife hiding from the light all day. She 
would n’t even come out on the porch to sit, until 
the sun had gone down. You could n’t find such a 
woman now. 

“Our old notions of propriety have greatly 
changed, and very much for the better. The painted, 
befeathered, and befrizzled female is no longer our 
ideal. She ’s been the doll and the plaything of man 
long enough, and now, I say, ‘Let her vote.’ Any- 


Ideals in Education 125 

thing that will give her a wider interest will be a 
benefit. Her curse in the past has been the narrow- 
ness of her sphere. She has had nothing but the 
kitchen and the house — no outdoor interest, no 
impersonal interest. 

“The ‘new woman,’ as you find her among the 
college girls, is a great success. She is manly in the 
best sense of the word — not afraid of dust or sun — 
likes to walk and row and swim. The college girls 
who come to see me are very attractive in their un- 
conventionality of manner, and their freedom from 
artificial restraints. I recall how one of them took 
a snooze on my piazza at Slabsides in a perfectly 
natural, childlike way. I don’t like mannishness, but 
I do like simplicity and naturalness. These girls 
no longer pinch their waists nor pride themselves 
on small feet, and I think their more robust physical 
life means a great deal for coming generations.” 


VIII 

May , 1897 

FARMING BESIDE THE HUDSON 

When I reached West Park by train at seven in the 
evening, Burroughs was waiting for me seated com- 
fortably on the station steps with his small black- 
and-white dog beside him. We went over the hill to 
Riverby and lingered in the little summer-house 
while the dusk deepened into night. Down below us 
on the Hudson some rowboats were moving about, 
and there were floating lights drifting with the tide 
at the ends of the shad-nets. Now and then a tug 
toiled past with a long line of canal-boats in tow. 
Across the river was a steam yacht that was turning 
its searchlight along the hillsides. Once the light 
blazed full on us. 

I had expected to stay at Slabsides, for Burroughs 
had written me, “They are cleaning house at Riv- 
erby (they always are).” But Mrs. Burroughs chose 
to have us in the stone house, where she presided. 

Rain was falling when the next day dawned, and 
Burroughs and I spent most of the time visiting on 
the upper piazza. In telling me what he had been 
doing since I had seen him last, he said : “The book 
that I’ve read with more interest than any other of 
late is Lloyd’s ‘Wealth against Commonwealth.* 



Reading his Mail at the West Park Station 







The Most Relaxing Position 99 



Afternoon in the Shadow of 
the Study 




Farming beside the Hudson 127 

When I first heard its title I said to myself, ‘I smell 
something in that book I want.’ 

“My boy read it, too, and wrote a long-winded 
blowout on it for his school paper. He writes with 
great ease — too great. The book has to do with 
the ways of the Standard Oil Company, a concern 
that robs the country of millions of dollars every 
year. It is perfectly conscienceless, yet the head of 
it is a famous endower of schools and colleges. The 
blood money he has given to educational and re- 
ligious institutions would aggregate a vast fortune. 
But it won’t blot out the record the recording angel 
must have against him if that angel has done his 
business at all. 

“Any one who takes up the book can’t lay it down. 
It is more fascinating than a novel, and it rouses 
your anger. If the book was written with the inten- 
tion to make you mad, it is a success. I was so mad 
I wanted to go out and kick stumps. After all, 
anger is an interesting sensation. The author, if 
one can judge from his picture, is a gentle, poetic 
man, and the literary value of his book is very great. 
His sarcasm is as effective as anything I have ever 
read. 

“I wrote to the ‘Century’ and told the editors 
that here was a man who ought to prepare a series 
of articles for them on our monopolies. They re- 
plied that his book was incendiary. Of course it is. 
Truth is always incendiary in a world of sham and 


128 John Burroughs Talks 

lies. Their answer stirred me up so that I wrote them 
a very hot letter. I did n’t care what I said, and I 
thought the letter would break our friendship and 
that they never would take another article of mine. 
But it apparently has n’t made any difference. 

“I could n’t help being irritated by their con- 
servatism. I ’m an independent in politics and would 
gladly smash the machine in both parties. I would 
vote to have the Government take control of the 
railroads and telegraphs and telephones to-morrow. 
I would vote to abolish private ownership in land. 
I would vote to have the Government take charge 
of the coal-fields, of petroleum, and all the great 
monopolies. I would vote to give women the ballot 
to-morrow.” 

Burroughs’s comments on the Standard Oil Com- 
pany were made at the time when “muckraking” 
in our books and magazines was creating consider- 
able stir. It has been affirmed by persons who were 
in a position to know the facts that there was much 
of exaggeration and misstatement in what was 
printed about the Standard Oil Company, but, 
whether or not the observations Burroughs made 
about Lloyd’s book throw any light on the subject, 
they are very typical of his reactions. 

Milder topics engaged our attention afterward 
until, just as Burroughs was speaking with enthusi- 
asm of the crops he hoped to raise on the Slabsides 
bog, Mrs. Burroughs joined us. “It’s a valuable 


Farming beside the Hudson 129 

property — that bog,” she remarked sarcastically. 
“You can’t raise white beans on it.” 

She had me go for a tour of the house with her, and 
called my attention to various improvements she 
had made and apologized for a grease-spot on the 
floor and for flyspecks on the window-panes. 

By afternoon the rain had ceased falling, and 
Burroughs piloted me up to Slabsides through the 
wet woods. The place had been tamed somewhat 
since a year ago, and two new cottages built by 
friends of Burroughs for summer retreats were 
perched on the rocks. The bog was under better 
cultivation, and near his cabin was a little shanty 
occupied by a flock of hens. The hens were picking 
about the bog mould as if the surroundings were 
much to their liking. 

Green vines had begun to climb the shaggy cedar 
posts of the cabin piazza. Indoors the living-room 
was taking on a more domestic air, though the 
dwelling was evidently a man’s house, and there was 
the litter of a man’s housekeeping quite apparent 
all through it. But the newness was getting worn 
off, and there were signs of use, and of adaptation to 
working convenience. Over the bed was suspended 
a wide framework with a fly-netting attached. 
Cords and wheels were so arranged that this con- 
trivance could be let down at night and pulled up 
in the morning. “One mosquito will keep me awake 
all night,” Burroughs said. 


130 John Burroughs Talks 

Before we started back, Burroughs hunted up the 
hens’ nests among the bushes and rocks bordering 
the clearing and filled his pockets with eggs to take 
down to Riverby. One hen was sitting, and he re- 
marked, “I’ll have what eggs she has under her and 
give her a nestful to-morrow.” 

While we were rambling about or sitting together, 
Burroughs told me about the evolution of his Riv- 
erby home: 

“The confining work in the Treasury at Wash- 
ington didn’t suit me,” he declared. “I wanted 
to go to farming, but I hesitated to depend on 
farming for a living, and I accepted an appoint- 
ment as receiver of a Middletown, New York, bank 
that was in financial difficulties. I went to Middle- 
town with the idea that the work would occupy me 
only a few months, but I was there off and on for 
five years. The courts grind exceedingly slow and 
fine, and even so don’t give the public much in re- 
sults. In this case, however, the officers had stolen, 
and there was a bad snarl. 

“For a year my wife and I boarded in Middle- 
town, but I wanted a permanent home — some sort 
of a rural place with land enough to support me, and 
I looked around to see what I could find. My search 
took me out on Long Island once in response to an 
advertisement. But I did n’t fancy so flat a coun- 
try. I wished to be in a more rugged region that 
would be something like my native hills, and I 


Farming beside the Hudson 131 

wanted to be where both New York City and my old 
home in the Catskills would be reasonably acces- 
sible. I investigated several places along the Hud- 
son that were for sale. Those I visited at first did n’t 
have enough land, and I could n’t have bought what 
land there was unless I covered it with dollars. 

“After a while I heard that a man wanted to sell 
a ten-acre farm here at the hamlet which was later 
called West Park. The hamlet is one of four that 
form the town of Esopus. I came by boat, and I had 
a curious feeling, when I stepped on the dock, that 
the place was to be my home. It was a very dis- 
tinct occult premonition. 

“Doubtless many hidden influences have an 
important effect on our lives. There is a whole uni- 
verse of things that sway us of which we are not 
cognizant. The stars may play a much greater part 
than we have any idea they do. We only observe the 
concrete things, but there is a vast world back of 
them, and occasionally a gleam of it comes through 
a crack of the mind some way or other. Yes, much 
is inexplicable from the viewpoint of our present 
knowledge. But a mental and spiritual evolution 
is going on, and depths beneath depths will open 
in the course of time, if we can judge by what has 
occurred in the past. 

“As I said, I felt, when I arrived here, that I had 
reached the end of my quest. It was the only time 
in my life when future events cast their shadows 
before. 


132 John Burroughs Talks 

“The farm was in a very good state of cultivation. 
Grapes, pears, currants, strawberries, and raspber- 
ries were growing on it, and the owner shipped his 
fruit to New York. He kept a cow and raised hay 
enough to feed her. In the spring he fished for shad. 

“There were apple trees, and the man had a 
cider-press and made champagne cider, which he 
bottled and sold. The cider was good — at least it 
tasted mighty nice — but I don’t think it was bene- 
ficial. He owned a receipt for making the cider, and 
he tried unsuccessfully to have me pay him two or 
three hundred dollars for it. 

“The farmer had four or five children, and though 
he was pretty poor he managed to eke out a living. 
It was his scheme to sell his farm if he could get a 
price that would enable him to buy a good-sized 
one where land was cheaper. His dwelling was a 
low old farmhouse that had been built fully a hun- 
dred years and was of very little value, and the barn 
was so shabby it was almost worthless. Yet he asked 
seven thousand dollars for the place. Land was high 
then, but it did n’t warrant such a price. No other 
similar property along there had changed hands at 
so extravagant a figure. But I closed the bargain. 
I was reckless, and in my eagerness to get on the 
land could n’t wait. I said, ‘I must have it.’ 

“That was in 1873, and soon after I bought the 
place we had a great panic and things took a tumble. 
Anyhow, I had the satisfaction of owning a real fruit 


Farming beside the Hudson 133 

farm. Near by were woods in which I could walk, 
and from some of the upland heights I could see my 
native Catskills. I was pleased, too, by the fact that 
not far from my acres was a big heap of squarish 
stones of all sizes wedged off the parent ridge of rock 
by the frost, and just the material I wanted to use in 
building me a house. 

“My change of residence was a benefit to my 
health. I ’d been having malaria down in Washington, 
and though I did n’t entirely escape it by shifting 
my dwelling-place, the malaria I had in the valley 
of the Hudson was less malignant and persistent. 

“I began to build my stone house in August, the 
very month I bought the place, and by the end of 
the season the walls were done and the roof on. In 
the fall of the following year the house was finished 
and we moved in. It cost me six thousand dollars, 
in spite of the fact that I got the stone back in the 
woods without any expense except the hauling. 

“I would n’t build the same kind of a house now. 
It was the expression of a rather green and unedu- 
cated taste in me. I had n’t any light on the subject 
and hadn’t studied the problem. A low rambling 
house that would nestle down in the landscape would 
have been much better. Yes, if I was to build again 
I would put up a house that was much humbler and 
less expensive. Country houses as built now are apt 
to be finicky and elaborate. They haven’t the re- 
pose and dignity of the Colonial farmhouses. 


134 John Burroughs Talks 

“One of the curses of wealth is lack of taste and 
simplicity. Poor people, by necessity, have to be 
comparatively quiet and homely. But let them make 
money and they get gaudy at once. It’s astounding 
— the vulgarity of the rich. When a rich man 
chooses some country region for his home, I suppose 
the people there rejoice. But if he comes just to 
display his wealth, as rich men frequently do, he is 
a curse. It should be his effort to show people that a 
rich man can live a simple, contented life. 

“The worst thing he can do is to build one of these 
million-dollar houses. If he’d repent, when he’d 
got it done and seen it there cumbering the earth, 
and would blow it up with dynamite, he’d show 
some sense. But he doesn’t — and there it must 
stand for scores of years to corrupt the taste of 
everybody, and very likely be a burden to those who 
come after him. How any one can want to live in 
marble halls and be passing up and down marble 
stairways all his life is a mystery. 

“The vulgarity of wealth should be sat down on 
in this country as often and as hard as possible. If 
you built a house that reached to the moon, you 
could only live in it, eat in it, sleep in it. All those 
who get sudden wealth seem to feel that building a 
house like a lord makes them lords. But the result 
is merely a monument to their lack of taste. Wealth 
should be used more for the common good — to make 
two blades of grass grow where only one grows now. 


Farming beside the Hudson 135 

to bring to the masses increased comfort and re- 
finement. 

“If I was to build just to suit myself and in the 
place that would be most pleasant to me, I’d have a 
small house in a wood where I could step right out; 
into nature. I ’d build it without any reference what- 
ever to outside people and passers-by. It should be 
made just to suit the comfort of the occupants, and 
the 'looks would be left to take care of themselves — •< 
and, after all, you’d be surprised to find what good 
architectural effects you’d get in that way. I would 
have broad roofs and plenty of windows and make 
the rooms cheerful with open fireplaces. 

“But though my stone house has its shortcom- 
ings, it is well made, and I did n’t go astray when I 
used oiled native woods — oak, butternut, cherry, 
maple, and birch — for the interior. I hunted up 
many of the trees used for this purpose myself, and 
I helped get out the stones. All in all, the task of 
building the house was one of the happiest I ever 
engaged in. 

“I took care that the library had a fireplace, but 
it’s too small, and it’s not a success from the house- 
keeper’s point of view. It makes a mess with its 
litter. There are ashes to carry out, and it causes 
dust and dirt, which a woman sees when a man 
does n’t. Just the same I would n’t do without a 
fireplace in my house and I would have it a big one. 
I like to look at the fire. The sight warms me — 
warms my spirit. 


136 John Burroughs Talks 

“ Besides building the house, I laid out roads and 
walks, planted trees and hedges, and fixed up the old 
barn. 

“I called my new home Riverby. I wanted a name 
suggestive of the situation, but which would not be so 
hackneyed as Riverside or Riverview. 

“In the spring of ’74 I took full possession of the 
place and hired a man to cultivate the land. My wife 
and I lived in the little old farmhouse until our new 
house was ready. 

“Meanwhile, there was the Middletown bank that 
had to have my attention. But although my work 
as receiver was long-drawn-out, it was comparatively 
light after the first few months, and I had to be at 
Middletown only a short time about once in four 
or five weeks. As my work shrunk, my income from 
that source shrunk too. My writings were bringing 
in very little and my farm had n’t begun to support 
me. I felt the need of some other source of income, 
and in 1876 I secured the position of examiner of 
banks for some of the Hudson River counties. Even 
then I could be at home two thirds of the time. 

“I have had still one other Government position. 
When the West Shore Railroad was put through in 
1884, we tried to get a post-office at West Park. I 
was the main mover in the matter, and after we suc- 
ceeded, the people wanted me to be postmaster. I 
held the position ten years. The office was at the 
railroad station, and the station agent did most of 


Farming beside the Hudson 137 

the work. I went in once or twice a day to help sort 
the heaviest mails. 

“The Hudson was a great attraction to me when 
I was considering locating at West Park. I thought 
I could fish to my heart’s content, and I could watch 
the passing steamers and sailing-vessels and the 
canal-boats with their villages of life, and I could 
have a rowboat, and I could swim in summer and 
skate in winter. 

“But I failed to develop any very pronounced 
liking for the river. It gradually palled on me. If I 
went for a row the wind was likely to buffet me 
about, or, when I ’d gone as far as I chose to go, I ’d 
find the tide against me, and I ’d have to labor to get 
back. Sometimes my boat would be stolen, and some- 
times I’d draw it up on the shore and neglect it so 
long that it would all dry up and the cracks open. 

“Fishing was another disappointment. I used to 
put out setlines for eels and catfish. The setlines 
were two or three hundred feet long, and at every 
three feet a short line with a hook was attached. But 
when it came to taking up the setlines, I’d perhaps 
find they’d got fast on rocks, snags, or something, 
and I ’d quit in disgust trying to get them. A good 
many of my setlines are still out there in the river 
and have been for twenty years. 

“Skating on the frozen waterway was one of my 
winter recreations, especially when my son was a 
boy and skated with me. I never had a pair of skates 


138 John Burroughs Talks 

in my own boyhood and did n’t learn to skate until 
I was teaching near West Point. 

“One breezy winter day when I was on the river, 
an ice yacht got loose from its moorings and came 
straight at me full tilt. It was a big one that weighed 
a ton. If I was hit by it, I would be mangled and 
perhaps killed. But just before it reached me, it 
made a tack and rushed away in another direction. 
A few moments later it crashed into the shore and the 
thousand-dollar craft was splintered into fragments. 
I ’ve ridden on those ice yachts, but I don’t like that 
kind of a ride. It ’s too cold. 

“Sometimes in the spring I have a good time 
boiling down sap. There are a number of maple 
trees on the edge of one of the Riverby terraces, and 
I tap about a dozen of them, make an arch of stones, 
and set up a pan just as they did it at Roxbury. I 
boil the sap through the calm spring days and enjoy 
myself thoroughly. There have been years when 
I’ve made as much as fifty pounds of sugar. When 
friends come, we sugar off and make lock-jaw, a 
delicacy that you get by boiling the maple syrup till 
it ’s waxy, and then you spread it with a big spoon on 
a pan of snow. After it has cooked, you put a gob 
in your mouth and your jaws are pretty effectively 
locked till the gob dissolves. 

“ When I took charge at Riverby I knew very little 
of the science of farming. My present knowledge of 
the rotation of crops and their cultivation, and the 


Farming beside the Hudson 139 

fertilizing and treatment of soils has been mostly 
acquired since. From the start I made the place pay. 
I farmed for the money there was in it, but I only 
cleared a few hundred dollars a year for a while, and 
that did n’t take account of the interest on my in- 
vestment. 

“After two or three seasons I dug up the rasp- 
berries and strawberries on the place. Such crops 
were too hurrying for me. Berries are just like 
hot cakes — they need to be consumed at once. I 
had to get them off rain or shine, Sunday, Monday, 
and all the rest of the days. Sometimes the weather 
was so hot I ’d want to go and sit in the shade. But 
that would n’t do. There hung the berries with tears 
in their eyes — I’ve seen a little drop of juice in the 
cup of the raspberries many a time when they were 
over-ripe and the day was very warm. No matter if 
it was hot as the mischief, and no matter whether you 
could get pickers or not, the berries had to be picked 
that day. I pity the man who grows berries for the 
market. The first year we packed ours in the house 
dining-room, and afterward we did it in the wash- 
house. I got enough of handling berries, and I said, 
‘I won’t be under the lash of these things.’ 

“The currants paid as well as anything. We got 
a crop every year for which we received from seven 
to ten cents a quart. At first we were able to get 
enough young women in the village to pick them, 
but later we could n’t. Then we had a gang come 


140 John Burroughs Talks 

from Rondout. They were ragamuffins who raised 
Cain and were too disturbing. They’d drive you 
crazy. So we rooted out the currants. 

“We’ve grown peaches profitably. I’ve sold some 
for as much as four dollars a basket, and a great many 
for two dollars and a half and three dollars. The 
largest crop was more than five hundred baskets. 
But the uncertainties were discouraging. You never 
could tell whether the trees would do well or not. 
They’d have thriven better if we’d had a northern 
hillslope for them so they’d keep steadily frozen all 
winter. On warm slopes the buds are apt to start in 
mild spells, and afterward they get nipped by cold, 
which kills the embryo blossoms. 

“Some years we’d be left high and dry without 
a peach. Peach trees are unhealthy, anyway. When 
you’ve got one or two crops from them, they’re 
about done for. We had four different orchards. One 
that was under the hill never bore a peach for six 
years. Then we harvested half a crop. By that time 
the trees were getting old and we cut ’em down and 
put in grapes. 

“My house was never wholly satisfactory as a 
literary working-place. I wanted to get beyond the 
orbit of household matters, away from all the con- 
ventionalities, where I could be alone with my 
thoughts. So in 1881 I built the small study that 
stands a few rods east of the house. The outside of 
the walls is covered with chestnut bark, which I got 


Farming beside the Hudson 141 

some choppers in the local woods to save for me. 
It has been a place of comfort and serenity, in 
which I could muse and write, and entertain at ease 
friends or strangers. 

The little open summer-house near the study is 
another of my structures, and I like to sit in it on 
warm afternoons. Once a robin built a nest beneath 
its roof, and the bird took a dislike to me owing to a 
cat which was sometimes my companion. She would 
cry and flutter about in much perturbation. Well, 
I respected her prejudices, gave up the summer- 
house to her, and carried my chair to the shadow of 
the rustic study. That spot was my afternoon sit- 
ting-place until the robin had raised her family and 
flown away with the fledglings. 

“I continued to attend to the duties of a bank- 
examiner for ten years, and I did the work con- 
scientiously, but I grew tired of it. My mind does n’t 
run in the clerical groove. No, it’s of the free-and- 
easy sort with an inclination to roam abroad wool- 
gathering. I had to put the screws right on to 
properly do the tasks that fell to me. The respon- 
sibility worried me a good deal. Sometimes it 
troubled me nights. Once there was a defalcation in 
a bank that I periodically examined. I had noticed 
that the teller was uneasy when I was there, but he 
was very clever in his methods and for a good while 
eluded detection. If I’d been an old fellow, ex- 
perienced in figures and brought up in the business, 


142 John Burroughs Talks 

— one who smells out things, — I’d have gotten a 
clue long before I did. 

“I’d had a definite notion from the start of getting 
out of bank-examining as soon as my land would 
support me, and it was a great joy when at last I 
was free. At the time I bought Riverby I’d saved 
enough to pay for it, with the exception of a small 
mortgage which I cleared off in a few years. After 
I gave up my salaried position, my income from the 
land was a very satisfactory sum. I also realized 
four or five hundred dollars a year from book royal- 
ties and nearly as much more from my contribu- 
tions to the magazines. 

“In 1888 I bought an adjoining ten acres, and 
then I began raising grapes in earnest. The grape- 
vines could be depended on to bear every year, if we 
did n’t have bad luck, and I made grapes my prin- 
cipal crop. 

“I went into grape-culture for my health. I was 
pretty well broken down — had insomnia and no 
appetite. What I wanted was something I could 
work at and feel an enthusiasm about. So I bought 
the additional land and fertilized it with the sweat 
of my brow, which is the best fertilizer in the world. 
Soon I could sleep again, and I ate my food with a 
new relish, and, besides, I made money. 

“After I got going in good shape, there was one 
year I marketed fruit that brought me forty-five 
hundred dollars. My expenses were about fifteen 


Farming beside the Hudson 143 

hundred. I kept a horse at a cost of a hundred dollars 
or more, and I put a similar sum into fertilizers. 
Crates took something like four hundred dollars, and 
hired help nearly a thousand. 

“In spite of the fact that I depend on the land for 
a living, I don’t ordinarily work very hard. I walk 
among my vines and prune them and care for them. 
I don’t do everything myself, but I see it done. Yes, 
and I help to hoe, and to tie up the vines, and to pick 
the currants, and to pack the grapes in baskets and 
put them in crates. The time I pitch in most se- 
riously is during the grape harvest. We have stren- 
uous days then, and there is a lot of work I do 
personally, besides having five men and three women 
to look after. While the campaign lasts my hands 
get very callous, and I lose in weight about two 
pounds a week. I ’m extremely tired when the season 
is over, but I think the work hardens me and does 
me good. 

“My aim has been to grow very fine fruit and 
choice kinds, and to market the crop early. My 
grapes are all gone and sold about the time the other 
people in the vicinity begin to cut. The result is that 
I get much the best price. In most vineyards the 
grass is allowed to grow, and it is mowed just before 
the grapes are picked, but I keep the ground cul- 
tivated and stirred up all the time. I use Canada 
hardwood ashes for fertilizer a good deal. In them 
you find all the elements ready for absorption. Stable 


144 John Burroughs Talks 

manure is coarse. The ashes are vital and quick. 
They have more virtues than show up in any chem- 
ical analysis. Yet I've found I can’t use them ex- 
clusively. They force a too rapid growth of the 
young canes, which in consequence get brittle and 
break off in the wind. 

“Growing fine grapes depends on high culture and 
severe trimming. It ’s fruit we want — not foliage 
and wood. In winter we get rid of all the old wood 
possible and leave only a few young and vigorous 
shoots. These shoots send forth exuberant new 
branches that have to be curbed. We can’t allow 
them to kick up their heels along the wires and in- 
dulge in riotous living. So we pull them free. When 
we do that, they droop down and seem to stop to 
think. It checks them at once, and in a day or two 
the clusters of grapes swell perceptibly. The vines 
always set more fruit than they ought to, and the 
superabundance has to be cut off. When we do this, 
the ground in places will be fairly covered with the 
green clusters. Visitors say, ‘What a shame to cut 
off the fruit that way ! ’ But pruning is the secret of 
success in grape-growing. So it is in literature. 
Prune, prune, prune ! You ’ ve got to have the courage 
to cut out your pretty periods, or you ’re done for. 

“One year I tried a vine to see what it would do 
without pruning. There were eighty clusters on it, 
and it was a question if it could ripen them all. Well, 
it did, but it was slow. It netted forty-five pounds 


Farming beside the Hudson 145 

of grapes. Yet I made more money from the vines 
that ripened twenty-five pounds early. 

“Yes, fruit-growing in recent years has been my 
chief source of income. I have several wealthy neigh- 
bors who grow fruit, and they say they don’t see how 
I make anything — they can’t. But they don’t have 
to. I tell them that if they had to make money on 
their fruit they’d make it, and there ’d be an end of 
their complaining that everything costs them more 
to grow than it will market for. I ’ve made fruit pay, 
and pay handsomely. 

“I’ve had only two unsuccessful seasons. Once 
we were handicapped by a drouth. The other time 
everything was looking very promising in midsummer, 
and I went with my family to spend a few weeks in 
the Catskills. One day we had a severe storm, and 
we noticed it was much blacker in the Riverby di- 
rection than where we were. That morning we had 
received a letter from our man at the farm telling how 
finely things were coming on, but in the evening, 
just before supper, a telegram arrived which said: 
‘Heavy hailstorm. Crop completely destroyed.’ 
My wife read it and kept it to herself till I had eaten 
supper. When I had that safe, she handed over the 
telegram. It agitated me so that I could n’t see to 
read it through a second time. If the crop was alto- 
gether destroyed, I knew the vines were so injured 
as to be worthless too. There was no sleep for me 
that night. 


146 John Burroughs Talks 

“Next day I went home. My spirits rose a peg 
when I got to the vineyards. A part of the crop could 
still be saved and the vines would survive. There 
had been a cloudburst, and it had rained ‘whole 
water’ with hail enough to whiten the ground. The 
hail had bruised every grape-cluster and injured 
many of the peaches. We had to trim out the hurt 
grapes when we harvested, and that increased costs. 
Besides, the crop was light and the vines had lost 
enough foliage to make the grapes smaller and later 
than usual. So the fruit didn’t show up in good 
shape to get fancy prices. 

“I know the reason why the hailstorm came. It 
struck only my vineyards and those of an adjoining 
neighbor. I told him the storm was the ghosts of 
orioles we had killed visiting retribution on us. 

“The orioles do more harm in the vineyards than 
any other birds. They don’t simply eat the grapes — 
they puncture them with their bills. They do that 
partly, at least, to get the juice, but they seem to 
continue the jabbing for mere pleasure — go on a 
drunk. We have to shoot them, and while we do so 
the old cat follows us around mewing hungrily. We 
feed him all the birds we shoot, and still he wants 
more. 

“The market for what we grow in our vineyards 
did n’t use to get glutted, and I ’ve sold grapes for 
twenty cents a pound — lots of ’em. During the 
harvest we’d get telegrams every day from Boston 


Farming beside the Hudson 147 

and New York: ‘Price so and so. Demand good/ 
How those words, ‘Demand good/ did tickle us! 

“But, as the years have passed, the cost of raising 
grapes has remained about the same, while the price 
has gone down. To some extent the growers them- 
selves are guilty of killing the goose that laid the 
golden egg. Large quantities of a grape called the 
Champion are shipped. It ’s a boarding-house grape. 
You can put it on the table and it looks well and 
smells good, but you can’t eat it. Apparently it is 
salable until the boarding-houses are stocked up, 
and after that it is a drug on the market. It’s an 
inferior kind, very hardy and prolific, but hogs can’t 
eat it. In short, while it is attractive to the eye, it 
betrays the tongue. I would n’t be seen growing 
those Champions any more than I ’d be seen stealing. 
The public get disgusted with such fruit and they 
get disgusted with the unripe fruit that the growers 
send to market. I ’ve been hoping the boards of 
health would take the matter up, and shut off the 
unripe and inferior fruits, but I’m afraid it’s too 
late. I think the goose is nearly dead. Anyway, it ’s 
evident that people don’t eat as many grapes. 

“I chafe dreadfully under some of the methods of 
the vineyard-owners. What satisfaction is there in 
sending off fruit that you know is not what it should 
be and in trying in every way to raise good-looking 
fruit and early fruit, no matter whether it is eatable 
or not? The iron enters my soul deeper and deeper 


148 John Burroughs Talks 

every year. All up and down the river there is this 
mad rush to be first in the market and a fierce eager- 
ness to get the tip-top price. 

“One thing the growers do is to force the grapes 
by girdling them. If a ring of bark is cut off a branch 
of a vine it has the curious effect of making that 
branch grow more luxuriant, and the wood swell 
to twice the size of the other branches. I don’t know 
exactly why this is, for if you girdle a tree it dies. 
But in the tree the life blood flows through the bark, 
while in the grapevine it goes up the woody stem. 
The grapes on a girdled branch grow much larger and 
ripen earlier than on an ungirdled. It is an unnatural 
process, and the grapes, in spite of their fine looks, 
never have first-class quality. Yet they are passable 
if you let them ripen to perfection. I|ut we don’t 
do that. The fruit goes to market just as soon as it 
looks well. That is the only necessity in early fruit 
— it must look well — and the man whose fruit 
reaches market first gets the top price. Lots of fruit 
goes that is n’t fit for the pigs. I can see the eaters’ 
mouths pucker in advance. I don’t like to girdle, 
but competition has compelled me to do as the rest 
did. I let my fruit hang long enough to be palatable, 
though. Why should n’t we sell a good article? To 
sell a poor article simply murders the market. 

“In the earlier years I kept a horse, and I used 
to drive him on errands. Once I had an adventure 
with him that I shall never forget. The beast ran 


Farming beside the Hudson 149 

away with me. I tore my clothes, and I tore my skin. 
My wife mended my clothes, but my skin had to 
get along the best way it could. I was going to 
Esopus, a village a few miles to the north, with a 
load of empty berry-crates. Presently I came to a 
pitch downhill, and I began to pull on the reins to 
make the horse go slower, and the crate I sat on 
began to give. The next thing I knew, down I came 
on the horse’s back with the crate after me. It was 
enough to make a dead horse run. He started off 
lickety-brindle and left me in the road; and every 
few moments, as he galloped along, another crate 
jolted off and exploded. When the horse got to the 
village he turned a corner, and the wagon struck a 
telegraph pole and actually took it right off. But 
the shock slackened the horse’s speed, and some one 
caught him. Taken all in all, I had a lively scrimmage. 

“Yes, although things at Riverby were as a rule 
serene and even humdrum, a spice of excitement was 
not entirely lacking. I remember how I got mad 
once that summer I had the horse adventure. I’m 
always sorry in such cases afterward, for getting mad 
is undignified and does no good, but I think I had 
great provocation. I was passing the place of a 
cross-grained fellow who owned a cross-grained dog, 
when the dog rushed out at mine and began a fight. 
My dog is plucky and he fought back. He isn’t 
afraid. You sick him on and he’ll take hold of an 
elephant and clinch him. I had a friend along with 


150 John Burroughs Talks 

me, and we each took a dog by the tail and pulled 
them apart. I had the assaulting dog, and I threw 
him over the fence. But no sooner was my dog loosed 
than he was over the fence after the other dog to 
continue the fight. Then the dog’s owner appeared 
on the scene with a pitchfork, crying out that he 
would run my dog through. The idea, when his dog 
began the row! I was mad, and I gave the man a 
piece of my mind. I speak pretty fluently when I ’m 
mad, and loud too — holler just as my father did. 

“I had to be a farmer. I never would have been 
content otherwise. I come of a family that has always 
lived on the soil. Muscular labor brings its recom- 
pense, for you relish your sleep and your victuals. 
I have as much comfort in being tired as in any- 
thing else. Sometimes I will take a long walk just 
for the pleasure it’ll be, when I get back, to sit down 
— that’s such a luxury! 

“In the less busy portions of the year I work some 
every day — probably more than half the time; but 
that leaves me plenty of leisure to poke around the 
woods and sit under the trees. I do a good deal of 
‘ loafing and inviting my soul,’ as Whitman says. It 
is my way of getting mental and physical relaxation, 
and I find that such loafing is the proper thing for me. 
Where other people would rust, I thrive. 

“As to the village in which I’ve made my home, 
it has had one serious lack — it is rather poor in the 
way of human companionship. There is almost no 


Farming beside the Hudson 151 

middle class. What I miss is persons with tastes 
like my own, but the neighbors are either million- 
aires or poor working-people, and I don’t sympathize 
with the interests of either. None of the dwellers in 
the region has become my intimate associate. 

“The next place north of mine was acquired by a 
set of religious men, who established a monastery 
there. They are an Episcopal brotherhood known 
as the Holy Cross. What they are trying to do is to 
revive the monastic ideas of the Middle Ages. But 
I can’t imagine their making a permanent success, 
for the scheme is out of joint with the present times. 

“I am very well situated for going occasionally 
to my Catskill home and to New York; and Whit- 
man and other friends have been here to see me. 
Besides, a constantly increasing number of visitors 
have come just out of curiosity. 

“So far as nature is concerned, I’ve had all the 
elements at Riverby I could expect to find any- 
where. I probably could n’t have struck a better 
situation for getting into contact with wild life. The 
valley is a natural highway of birds in their migra- 
tions north and south, and this brings to my door the 
feathered folk of many latitudes. Also, the village 
is right on the threshold of a great tract of rugged, 
untamed country, studded and laced with secluded 
ponds and streams, that extends back for miles and 
miles. This wilderness has been cut into a good deal, 
and there are some streaks of land that are farmed, 


1 52 John Burroughs Talks 

but most of it is n’t cultivatable. The combination 
of the fertile strip bordering the river and the nearby 
wild region appealed to me strongly when I first in- 
vestigated the place. If all the region had been 
highly cultivated, I probably should have located 
elsewhere. There was mental stimulus in being close 
to the soil and delight in taking the birds and other 
wild creatures into my intimacy and affection. It 
was a great enjoyment and is yet. 

“So I’ve been as happy at Riverby as most men 
are anywhere in this world of ours, I guess.” 


IX 

September , 1897 
RUSTIC HOUSEKEEPING 

I arrived at West Park about sundown and found 
Burroughs at the station amid a group of local men, 
women, and children who were sitting or standing 
about to see the train come in. He carried a market- 
basket on his arm, and we went to the near-by coun- 
try store, where he bought and stowed into the basket 
some groceries. When we came away he said, “I’ve 
been a good customer there for canned goods and 
prepared foods since I took to living in the woods.” 

He was a vigorous walker, and as he led the way 
toward Slabsides it was as much as I wanted to do 
to keep up with him. We did not go by the road and 
the cart-path, but by a rocky, slippery short-cut 
through the full-foliaged woods up a steep hill. That 
saved half a mile, and it was Burroughs’s customary 
route. The evening dusk was thickening into night, 
but we were assisted somewhat in avoiding stumbling 
by a three-quarters moon that let fall scattered 
shreds and patches of yellow light through the leaf- 
age. The weather was warm, and it was a sweaty 
climb. 

Halfway up was a leaning dead tree. There Bur- 
roughs stopped, set down his basket, and rested his 


154 John Burroughs Talks 

back against the barkless tree-trunk for a few min- 
utes. “It ’s a habit I have when I’m going up this 
path,” he informed me. 

A good many tall hemlocks grew in that vicinity, 
and he said, “Along here in the damp mould of the 
evergreen shade one finds those ghostly growths — 
Indian pipe, beech drops, and coral moss.” 

We soon resinned our climbing, and at length the 
path came out in a grassy woodroad, and the hardest 
part of the journey was past. As we approached 
Slabsides, the pleasant odor of growing celery came to 
us, and then we emerged from the woods into the 
rock-bound clearing, and there was the cabin close 
at hand looming dull and dark against the sky. 

Burroughs’s brother Hiram was living with him 
at Slabsides, and he was sitting on the piazza. A 
nephew, “Ed,” who helped with the work at Riv- 
erby, was also there, and we took off our coats and 
settled down with them to cool off. We were well 
above the swamp basin, and we could see faintly in 
the moonlight its plot of straight celery-rows, its 
patches of cabbages and potatoes and sweet corn. 

Now and then a mosquito came around to investi- 
gate, and while we talked we slapped. The katydids 
were engaged in their harsh disputing in the trees, 
a whip-poor-will sang a few notes from the near 
rocks, and at intervals we heard a little screech owl 
quavering not far away. 

By and by we saw lantern lights moving about 


Rustic Housekeeping 155 

among the trees and we concluded that a coon hunt 
was in progress. Soon the lights came in our di- 
rection, and as they drew near, Burroughs’s dog got 
excited and began to bark; nor would he stop when 
his master spoke to him. So Burroughs threw a stick 
at him and drove him under the piazza, where he 
growled from time to time until the huntsmen ar- 
rived. There were three of them and a dog, and they 
sat on the steps and talked coon for half an hour. 
Then they lounged off into the woods and continued 
their hunting. 

Toward nine o’clock we went to bed, and Bur- 
roughs and I occupied the bed of state in the birch 
alcove. 

One curious sound that never ceased, night or day, 
was a crackling noise made by the wood-borers which 
were working underneath the bark in the rustic 
house timbers. It was very mysterious — that con- 
tinuous frying and sputtering coming out of the log 
framework. 

When I awoke the next morning, a tree cricket 
was calling monotonously just outside the window, 
a hornet was buzzing about the room after flies, and 
from the mountain came cries of blue jays and crows. 
The dog padded in from his box on the piazza and 
put his paws on the bed and wagged his stubby tail, 
and we obeyed his summons and turned out. It was 
not yet six o’clock. 

Burroughs took charge of the breakfast prepara- 


156 John Burroughs Talks 

tions. First he stepped out and got an armful of 
wood and started the fire. There was a chill in the 
morning air, and as the blaze began to lick up the 
kerosene-soaked splinters the dog settled down on 
the hearth with his head between the andirons to 
catch the warmth. 

“Hi,” a grizzled, slouchy man of threescore years 
and ten, went forth to feed the poultry, and re- 
turned with half a dozen eggs. Ed brought water 
from the spring. On the piazza was a crooked stick 
— “one that has turned a summersault in growing,” 
Burroughs said as he examined it with interest. 
Somebody had left it expecting that he would work 
it into the architecture of his cabin or furniture. 

While he was bending over the kettle of sweet 
corn that was boiling for breakfast, he suddenly ex- 
claimed, “Thunder! I’ve got soot in there — of all 
the tribulations of a cook ! ” 

Besides the corn, we had oatmeal, eggs, milk, tea, 
honey, bread, and fried bacon; and there were to- 
matoes, cucumbers, and peaches, which were handed 
around in their skins for each one to deal with as he 
chose. There was no ceremony about our eating. 
We sat at the table in our shirt-sleeves, helped our- 
selves to what was within reach, and each went to 
the fireplace to get an egg when he was ready for it. 
The butter was in a tin pail, whence we extracted it 
with our knives to suit our individual needs. 

After breakfast Hi and Ed went off to work at 


Rustic Housekeeping 157 

Riverby, and Burroughs washed the dishes, set part 
of the things away in the cupboard, and pushed the 
rest to one end of the table and covered them with 
fly-netting. The dishwater he threw out of a rear 
window. All the waste was disposed of in that way. 
When the morning housework was finished, he went 
out and sat on the rail of the piazza, where a blossom- 
ing vine, the mountain fringe, had festooned a post, 
and, with the aid of his field-glass, watched a little 
hawk on a bare tree of the mountain-top. Soon he 
came indoors and wrote some letters at a table in the 
literary corner of his cabin — a corner which he had 
equipped with bookshelves. 

There were ducks as well as hens at Slabsides, and 
presently Burroughs went out and talked to them 
very companionably. He called them “Quackens.” 
One of them was a wild duck. “Julian captured it 
after a shot from his gun had broken its wing,” Bur- 
roughs explained. “It seems content with its tame 
companions now, though it always keeps a little 
apart.” 

He prepared to go down to Riverby for the day 
by putting up our dinner in a tin pail and filling 
a basket with potatoes that he turned out of the bog 
mould to carry to his wife. When we arrived at his 
house by the Hudson, he gave such orders as were 
needed to his workmen and went to a shed, where he 
nailed up crates of grapes and marked them with 
rubber stamps. Once we resorted to the summer- 


158 John Burroughs Talks 

house, and he made himself comfortable by lying on a 
long bench seat flat on his back for a while. “This 
is the most relaxing position there is,” he said. 

At noon we ate our tin-pail dinner, then did more 
grape-packing and picked peaches. The sky grew dull 
as the day advanced, and rain began to fall. We left 
for Slabsides at five, and Ed went with us. He and I 
had old rubber blankets wrapped around our shoul- 
ders. Burroughs carried an umbrella. Hiram had 
gone in time to escape the rain. 

When we came into the swamp clearing, we saw 
three boys sneaking out of a corn-patch with their 
arms full of ears. Burroughs called out at them 
sharply, and the two smaller boys dropped their 
loads, and all hurried out of sight. 

“Those are Amasy’s children,” he said to me. 
“You’ve seen Amasy — that rather shiftless farmer 
whom I often have working on the swamp here. He* 
lives about a mile farther back in the woods. I gave 
him leave to pick what ears he wanted to use from a 
patch of sweet corn at the other side of the swamp, 
but his boys were in a patch near my cabin that I ’d 
reserved for myself. Hiram planted this near piece, 
and the ears are so enormous that he has taken great 
pride in it and was saving the best of the ears for 
seed.” 

We went into the cabin, and the tale of the ma- 
rauders made Hiram very angry. He wanted to wreak 
vengeance on them, and he called them all sorts of 
names mixed with profanity. 


Rustic Housekeeping 159 

“They’ve taken your seed ears, Hi, I’ll warrant 
ye,” Ed said. 

“Oh, yes! they’ve taken your seed ears, I’ll war- 
rant ye,” Burroughs echoed. 

“I’ll warrant ye, they have,” Hi assented dis- 
mally, and he used some more bad language and 
went out to look over his garden and see if the rascals 
had carried off anything else. 

“Well,” Burroughs said, “I must get supper for 
the boys” — that is for Hi and Ed. 

He lit his student lamp and soon had the food on 
the table, and we all sat down and ate. Afterward, 
while he did the clearing up, Hi read from his bee 
magazine. When the dishwater had been thrown 
out of the window and the table wiped off. Burroughs 
brought out a ghastly portrait of himself that some 
amateur was painting and showed it to me. 

The weather was brighter next day, and as soon 
as the housework was done. Burroughs and I walked 
over the western ridge and down into the valley of 
the Shattega, a favorite resort of his. The Shattega 
is a luscious, swampy little river that in one place 
breaks into a noisy waterfall. The dog ran out on 
the rocks there and attacked the white rush of water 
with great courage. Sometimes it would knock him 
off the slippery rocks into the pool below, and 
again it would fill his mouth and eyes and choke 
and blind him, but he would not acknowledge 
himself vanquished. He seemed to think the foam- 


160 John Burroughs Talks 

ing water was alive. Burroughs greatly enjoyed his 
dog’s ardor. 

Presently we went to help with the vineyard work 
at Riverby, but returned to Slabsides in the middle 
of the day. There we found a man who was the 
proprietor of a hardware store in one of the towns 
of the Catskills, and, because he had some slight 
acquaintance with Burroughs, had come to call on 
him. He was a self-sufficient sort of fellow, very 
voluble, and given to peppering his most ordinary 
conversation with swear-words for the sake of em- 
phasis and geniality. 

When Burroughs set forth the dinner, he apolo- 
gized for the chops, which he had unfortunately 
scorched. But the hardware man said: “You don’t 
need to make no excuses. This dinner suits me. I ’d 
rather be where I am than at any gol-darn hotel I 
ever was at.” 

Later, he took advantage of a chance to speak to 
me privately, and remarked: “I know the Burroughs 
family up in Roxbury, and John is the smartest of 
the lot. He ’s forgot more than all the rest ever knew. 
What puzzles me is who he took his smartness from. 
I never heard that either his father or his mother 
amounted to much.” 

By and by the hardware man leisurely departed 
by way of the wood-road, and as soon as he dis- 
appeared we went down the short-cut to Riverby 
and got to work in the vineyard. The village school- 



A Waterfall in Slabsides Woodland 





Beside the Shattega 



On the Road to Slabsides 





Rustic Housekeeping 161 

house was not far from Burroughs’s premises, and as 
the time approached for the school to let out he said : 
“I wish you’d go up and watch those children pass 
my place. They We got a notion lately of climbing 
over the stone wall and stealing my grapes. If 
they’d come to me when they’re grape-hungry, I’d 
give them grapes. I don’t want them stealing. Be- 
sides, they don’t eat half they pick, but strew the 
grapes along the road.” 

I went up within sight of the children as they came 
along and they did no raiding that time. On my way 
back Mrs. Burroughs spoke to me from the house, 
and I stopped to talk with her. She told me all the 
news, and she discussed Slabsides with an air of 
complaint because Burroughs lived off in the woods 
and left her at Riverby, and she repeated what the 
neighbors said about this arrangement. He had ug- 
gested that she should close up the house and go off 
for a vacation in the summer, but she knew the 
dampness would ruin everything in the rooms if she 
did, and so she preferred to stay and be a martyr. 

Mr. Burroughs had already made his comment on 
the situation to me with a good deal of feeling. “In 
some ways,” he said, “my wife is one of the best 
women in the world, but I can’t help regretting that 
she has so devoted a regard for the trivialities of 
housekeeping. Housekeeping is all very well as a 
means to an end, but I don’t think it ought to be 
made an end in itself. There’s no changing her, how- 


162 John Burroughs Talks 

ever, and she’s so constituted that she is n’t content 
unless she has something to worry over. I wish she 
would make a home for me. It is n’t right, with all 
my other work, that I should be forced to do such an 
amount of housework. I’d still be doing housework 
even if I were at Riverby, but I’m able to have my 
brother with me up at Slabsides, and I escape many 
things that are disturbing to my easily ruffled sen- 
sibilities.” 

The fame of John Burroughs and the general in- 
terest in him make his domestic affairs a subject 
that cannot be passed over lightly. To say nothing 
leaves rumor free to scatter broadcast a mixture of 
fact and fiction which leaves the truth hopelessly 
distorted. It has seemed to me that frankness is the 
best course to put matters to rights, and I have re- 
corded such things as came within the range of my 
observation. Taken all together, I think they convey 
a fair idea of the situation. When Burroughs and 
Ursula North married at about the age of twenty, 
they were both rustic dwellers in the remote Catskill 
region. Her development did not keep pace with his. 
Her tastes continued rustic, and the friends she felt 
most comfortable with were plain everyday folk who 
did not interest him. He had just as decided likings 
as she did, and he was sensitive and temperamental. 
They grew apart, but not to any fatal degree, as I 
think my record proves. The two were not ideally 
mated, but things might have been worse. If Bur- 


Rustic Housekeeping 163 

roughs had married a spendthrift, or a sloven, or a 
follower of fashion, or a society butterfly — that 
would have been a disaster. 

Burroughs spoke of Julian’s entering college that 
fall, and added: “The great boat-races between 
Harvard and Yale took place here on the river a few 
weeks ago, and for a month previous we saw the 
Harvard crew practicing up and down the stream in 
view of our house. Julian caught the infection and 
adopted their costume. He went about his work in 
the scantiest sort of apparel that could be anyways 
called civilized — bareheaded, barearmed, and bare- 
legged. He has an itching to get on the Harvard crew, 
but I ’ve put my foot on that. I believe their racing 
is killing work.” 

The day was very warm, and that night at Slab- 
sides we found the mosquitoes out in force. So, when 
bedtime came, Burroughs let down his fly-netting 
and we crawled under and slept in peace. 

On the following morning, after the little jobs 
about the house were done, Burroughs locked the 
door and put the key under the doormat, and we 
went down to catch the train I was to take. But we 
miscalculated and did n’t get to the station soon 
enough. The next best thing was to go to Pough- 
keepsie by a little river steamer, and we parted on 
the West Park wharf. 


X 

May , 1900 


WALT WHITMAN 

When I got off the train at West Park, Burroughs 
was just coming to the station for his morning mail. 
Men were at work trimming up around the station, 
replacing the somewhat uncertain grass with lawn, 
thinning out the trees and shaping those they left, 
and making symmetrical roadways surfaced with 
broken stone. This was done by wealthy local resi- 
dents. Burroughs did n’t approve of the supposed 
beautification. “I think it is artificial and offensive,” 
he declared. 

His brother had returned to the Catskills, and 
he lived at Slabsides only when he had company. 
“We’ll go up there to spend the night,” he said. 
“ Meanwhile we ’ll try to enjoy ourselves here.” 

So we walked over to Riverby. Breakfast had 
been eaten, but he brought out a lunch for me and 
set it on the kitchen table. Later, we went down to 
the study. 

“The brick fireplace and chimney here are too 
small,” Burroughs said. “I’m going to tear them 
out and rebuild with cobblestones.” 

(He had this done the next summer, and it greatly 


Walt Whitman 165 

improved the appearance of the building both in- 
side and out.) 

A jew’s-harp lay on the study-table. “That is 
my only musical instrument,” he told me; “and 
when the cares and tribulations of the world get too 
much for me, I console myself by playing on it. My 
brother on the Catskills farm plays a jew’s-harp too. 
He keeps his hanging on the window-casing, where 
he can reach it from the chair he usually sits in.” 

We went for a ramble later. As we were starting. 
Burroughs spoke to his two hired men, who were 
cultivating the vineyard and stripping the new 
sprouts off the wires. He told them that if it got too 
hot they could lay off in the middle of the day and 
make up the time afterward. We walked down 
through the vineyard toward the river till we came 
opposite a poor white’s cottage on adjoining land. 
Burroughs’s wrath was roused to find that the cot- 
tage chickens had been scratching around his young 
grapevines and damaging them. 

The orchards were full of pink bloom, which he 
contemplated with delight. “I want to write a poem 
about orchards,” he remarked. 

He showed me a nest begun by an oriole on a 
pendant elm bough, and we sat down in a field to 
watch the nest-building of a chebec (the least fly- 
catcher). 

When we returned we cut some asparagus for 
dinner and carried it to the house. Mrs. Burroughs 


166 John Burroughs Talks 

had me make a pilgrimage from room to room, under 
her guidance, to see what she had been doing in 
house-cleaning. Everything was spick and span, and 
all the furnishings were arranged in regular order 
as if they had never been used. The rooms that she 
was most choice of were dim, and the sunlight was 
shut out to keep things inside from fading and to 
discourage the flies from making themselves at home. 

After the inspection was concluded, the house- 
wife cut up the asparagus and set it cooking and put 
some potatoes in milk gravy on the stove, and told 
Burroughs to take care of them. He and I went into 
the dining-room, where he lay down on the sofa. 
We talked till the voice of Mrs. Burroughs sounded 
faint and far off from the pantry. 

At once he jumped up as if panic-stricken and made 
a dive into the kitchen. “Yes, I’m stirring it,” he 
called back to her. “It ain’t done yet. I like pota- 
toes brown.” 

She was in a hurry to go to Poughkeepsie, and we 
had an early dinner in the kitchen, where the food 
was put on a table that was pushed back against the 
wall. 

“You can clear away the dishes,” she said to Bur- 
roughs as she was leaving. 

“What shall I do with them?” he asked. 

“Wash them,” she replied; “and you must put 
some coal on the fire.” (She kept the fire going, no 
matter how hot the weather.) 


Walt Whitman 167 

He dutifully attended to this work and afterward 
went out and looked at a thermometer hung on a 
post of the piazza. The mercury was up in the nine- 
ties. We loitered about until the heat had moderated 
somewhat, late in the day, and then he put a few 
eggs, bread, and other supplies in a basket and we 
started for Slabsides. On the way he stopped at a 
house and bought a quart of milk. 

Four other dwellings now kept Slabsides company 
on the adjacent cliffs. Burroughs pointed to one of 
them, and said: “That’s the latest, and it cost four 
thousand dollars. It was built by a man named 
Millard. His name was Millard before he accum- 
ulated wealth.” 

We walked across the swamp, with its long rows 
of young celery, and got a drink at Burroughs’s 
favorite spring, and he showed me an empty rabbit’s 
nest, saying, “It had two young rabbits in it a few 
weeks ago, but they perished in the last cold snap 
of April — ‘Babes in the Wood.’” 

He found several nests of the tent-caterpillar on 
the bushes and disposed of them by twisting a stick 
into them or breaking off the branch a nest was on. 

The things he had brought from Riverby that he 
wanted to keep cool he carried down a rough ladder 
into a cave back of his cabin, and as he made the 
descent or emerged from this cave he reminded me 
of Robinson Crusoe. 

In my acquaintance with Burroughs he often 


168 John Burroughs Talks 

spoke of Whitman with great warmth of affection, 
both as a man and as a writer, and while we sat 
on the piazza for an hour or two the “good gray 
poet” was again a topic of conversation. Burroughs 
said: “At the time I began living in Washington 
as a young man I had n’t been there long when 
Walt Whitman strolled into Allen’s rubber store, 
which I made my headquarters, and Allen intro- 
duced us. 

“It was a happy life — my ten years in Wash- 
ington. I used to see Whitman nearly every day. 
He had a sort of attic room in a boarding-house, and 
I frequently went there. Often we would take a 
stroll along Pennsylvania Avenue — sometimes by 
day, sometimes by moonlight. As a correspondent 
for the New York ‘Times’ he earned enough to sup- 
port him, and if he had any surplus during the war 
it went to the soldiers. Saving was not natural for 
him. He lived a careless, easy life, and went around 
like a man of infinite leisure. He had none of the 
smart business ways of the average American. His 
hair and beard were gray, and his clothing was gray. 
All together he made a large gray object you could 
see half a mile away. 

“Whitman often ate his Sunday-morning break- 
fast at our house. He was quite partial to my wife’s 
cooking, but exasperated her by never getting to 
the house on time. We’d see him swing off the horse- 
car and wend his way toward the house, with the 


Walt Whitman 169 

rolling, sailor-like gait that was characteristic of 
him; and no matter how late he was his own equa- 
nimity was not in the least ruffled. My wife’s good- 
humor was quickly restored. She couldn’t help 
liking him. No woman could help that. 

“He was very fond of one of the horse-car drivers, 
a young ex-Confederate soldier named Peter Doyle. 
I think Doyle had been brought to a hospital a 
prisoner, and that Walt, in his ministering to the 
soldiers, had found him there. Walt was a big, calm 
sort of man, full of fine, wholesome instincts. He 
liked any honest, level-headed fellow, and he would 
ride several miles standing on the front platform of 
the horse-car with Doyle. Probably they would n’t 
say much on the whole ride, but the good human 
companionship was a sufficient satisfaction. When 
I saw Whitman riding with Doyle, and he greeted 
me with a wave of his hand, I was very apt to get 
on and ride with them. 

“He left Washington just before I did and made 
his home in Camden, New Jersey, where he died in 
1892. I used to go to Camden to see him each .year. 
He was the sanest, sweetest man I’ve ever known 
— human, brotherly, typical, symbolical. No other 
writer approaches him as a stimulant to my intel- 
lect. What an uproar he made among the critics! 
As a rule they did n’t approve of him. 

“The trend of his mind was shown in his reading. 
He read the ancients — the Bible, and the old Oriental 


170 John Burroughs Talks 

bards — and he read Kant and Hegel and Scott’s 
‘Border Minstrels.’ He didn’t own many books. 
When he had got what he wanted from a book, he 
gave it away. 

“His clothing was simple and unconventional, 
and he did n’t put on anything different even at 
gatherings where you were expected to have on a 
dress-suit. Dress-suits — I hate ’em ! We got that 
ridiculous style of dress from England, I suppose. 
It’s entirely unnatural, and on that account the 
dress-suit business gets on my nerves. No, Walt 
Whitman would n’t have worn one. You always 
saw him in his gray clothes that were in entire keep- 
ing with the man. 

“He was poor, and I contributed money and got 
others to do so to save him from want in his old age. 
Some of his admirers gathered a fund of six thou- 
sand dollars and gave it to him to build a house, but 
he used it to build a tomb. There I thought he 
showed a weakness. An ostentatious, expensive 
tomb did n’t harmonize with the simplicity of the 
man himself. 

“Horace Traubel was with him a good deal in his 
later years, and wrote his life and reported Whit- 
man’s comments on all sorts of things in great detail. 
But he had no sense of proportion. There was some 
real gold, of course, but it was almost lost in an over- 
whelming amount of the commonplace. Besides, 
every time Whitman used a swear-word Traubel 


Walt Whitman 171 

put it in, and so gave the impression that Whitman 
was profane and coarse, which was not true. 

“Traubel was a worshiper of Whitman, and he 
tried to write poetry like him, but he only copied 
the master’s style, and produced words, not ideas. 
It was just an intellectual dysentery. Once I got a 
letter from a man who wanted to make up a purse to 
help Traubel along, but I did n’t care to contribute. 
He wrote such gush and rot I ’d have given a purse 
to have him stop.” 

In the early evening one of the swamp-side cliff- 
dwellers came with her little dog “Woggles,” and 
called at Slabsides. The dog put on an air of bravado 
and barked and tried to make the Slabsides cat 
vacate. 

Burroughs laughed, and said to the dog: “That’s 
pure bluff, Woggles. You’re shaking in your shoes. 
You know you are.” 

The caller brought a dish of Indian pudding she 
had left over from dinner, and Burroughs gave her 
some gelatine he had made. 

It was such a warm evening that we ate our supper 
on the piazza. 

We were up early the next morning, and Bur- 
roughs started his oil stove and cooked oatmeal 
and boiled some eggs. After breakfast we walked 
down to Riverby, where we found Mrs. Bur- 
roughs in her immaculate kitchen. She addressed 


172 John Burroughs Talks 

him reproachfully, saying: “Yesterday you bought 
a great piece of steak, after telling me again and 
again to get a shad in Poughkeepsie; and besides 
you told your hired man to get a shad for us. So 
now what are we to do with those two big shad and 
all that steak, I’d like to know.” 

Burroughs looked guilty. The problem was too 
much for him, and we slipped quietly out of the 
house. 

I wanted to get a train on the New York Central, 
when I prepared to leave later in the morning, and 
Burroughs had his man row me across the mile-wide 
Hudson to a station opposite. 


February, 1901 
READING AND WRITING 

On the morning that I arrived at Riverby, I learned 
that Mrs. Burroughs was boarding for the winter 
at Poughkeepsie. “But I don’t like Poughkeepsie,” 
Burroughs said. “I find I can’t work there, and I 
only go down for over Sunday. I have my meals 
during the week with the hired man’s family in the 
little old farmhouse that my wife and I lived in for 
a while when I first bought this place.” 

We visited for the greater part of the day in the 
bark-covered study, where he had set up a small 
box stove that kept the room slightly odorous of 
smoke. Back against the wall was a cot bed. 

“That ’s where I sleep,” he explained, “ and I spend 
most of my waking hours in the study, too. There ’s 
less elbow room than ever now that I ’ve put in the 
bed and the stove. Once in a while I get mad and 
have a cleaning-out here. Things accumulate so that 
I burn letters, magazines, books — a great mess of 
them. If I didn’t they’d soon monopolize all the 
space, and I’d have to move out.” 

We went up to Slabsides through the snowy woods, 
and when he had looked about he remarked: “I wish 


174 John Burroughs Talks 

I ’d brought a mouse-trap. The mice hold high car- 
nival here in my absence.” 

We had an evening together in the study until 
nine, and then we climbed the hill to the farmhouse. 
Burroughs took a kitchen lamp and guided me up a 
narrow stairway and along a passage to a low-ceiled 
chamber which the encroaching roof diminished on 
either side; and there I slept. 

On this visit I asked Burroughs about his literary 
likes and dislikes, and what chance, or efforts of his 
own, had led to his gaining the place he held among 
our writers. 

He replied: “I was always fond 6i books, and in 
that respect was unlike any of the other members of 
the family at the old farm. I never received much 
cultural help from my boyhood associates. You 
might think I would have got*something in that line 
from my teachers, but they were of the mechanical 
sort and only taught the regular routine. 

“There was a district library in our neighborhood 
— forty or fifty volumes of adventure, history, and 
travel — books of long ago. These were my first 
reading outside of schoolbooks. One of them I know 
contained accounts of the War of 1812. I used to 
gloat over and feed on the stories of the sea fights 
in it. The fight between the Wasp and the Hornet 
particularly appealed to me. I remember that well. 

“Another book was ‘Murphy, the Indian Killer.’ 
I read it again and again. How I was thrilled by 



Writing at Slabsides 








Getting Dinner 


♦ 





Reading and Writing 175 

Murphy’s brave deeds in fighting the savages and 
the Tories ! There was a life of Washington, too, that 
made a deep impression. 

“Reading was a pleasure to me from the first, but 
putting ideas in writing was something of a hardship 
to me as long as I attended the district school. I 
did n’t begin to find enjoyment in trying to express 
myself on paper until I was about sixteen and had 
gone away from home to study at an academy. 
Writing compositions was one of the requirements 
there. Only one boy stood higher in it than I did. 
He became a Methodist minister. 

“At the age of eighteen I made a trip to New Jer- 
sey, where I unsuccessfully sought a job as a teacher. 
On my way back to the farm I had to wait several 
hours in New York City for my boat to start on the 
voyage up the Hudson. So I went for a ramble 
about the streets and came across a second-hand 
bookstore, in which I spent nearly all my money. 
In fact, I did n’t have enough left to pay my way all 
of the journey home, and was obliged to walk the 
final twelve miles over the mountains and go without 
my dinner the last day. 

“I bought books that I had n’t known existed — 
bought them because I liked the looks of them. They 
were all serious reading. I did n’t buy novels. I 
did n’t care for them. My inclination has always 
been strongly toward history, philosophy, and sci- 
ence. That summer I helped on the farm and read 


176 John Burroughs Talks 

my books. I had Dick’s works in two big, fat vol- 
umes. They were philosophical — not very deep, 
but they launched off in a formidable way that I 
admired very much. One chapter, I know, began 
like this — ‘Man is a compound being. He is com- 
posed of body and spirit.’ 

“My purchases included copies of Shakespeare 
and some of the other poets, but I was n’t struck so 
much with the poetry as I was with the wit and 
sense. Shakespeare did n’t impress me very forcibly, 
anyway. His great dramatic power did n’t appeal 
to me. For a long time I placed Pope above him. I 
did n’t see his grandeur until later in life. 

“As a reader I have always been attracted by 
everything of the essay kind, and I bought Dr. 
Johnson’s works because, when I looked into them, 
they seemed to be solid essay stuff from beginning 
to end. His ‘Rambler’ captivated me. The essays 
all started out with high-sounding sentences which 
I thought were very felicitous. I did n’t want any 
dillydallying in those days. I began to write some- 
thing after the Johnson style — tried to make re- 
flections on life. I burned it up afterward, but not 
that year. Of course it was dreadful trash. 

“A letter I wrote on spiritualism was the first 
thing of mine to be printed. I contributed it to a 
little Delaware County newspaper in 1856. 

“When I was studying at Cooperstown, I one day 
took from the Seminary library a book by Emerson, 


Reading and Writing 177 

and read his essay on ‘The Poet.’ I could n’t make 
anything of it, and I tried others of the essays; but 
they were all the same sort of thing, and I carried 
the book back. 

“A year later I went out to Illinois to teach, and 
while browsing in a Chicago bookstore happened on 
Emerson’s books again. I looked into them and said 
to myself: ‘ Why, this is good! This is what I want.’ 
And I bought the whole set. 

“For a long time afterward I lived, moved, and 
had my being in those books. I was like Jonah in 
the whale’s belly — completely swallowed by them. 
They were almost my whole intellectual diet for two 
or three years. I kept my Emerson close at hand 
and read him everywhere. I would go up under the 
trees of the sap-bush there at home and read and be 
moved to tears by the extreme beauty and eloquence 
of his words. For years all that I wrote was Emer- 
sonian. It was as if I was dipped in Emerson. 

“I continued to teach in various places, and I 
worked vacations on the home farm, but, wherever 
I was, all my spare time was spent reading or writing. 
A series of short articles of mine was printed in the 
New York ‘Saturday Press,’ and I wrote some heavy 
essays for the New York ‘Leader.’ The ‘Press’ was 
the organ of the Bohemians and free lances, and the 
‘Leader’ was the organ of Tammany Hall, but had 
a literary department. Neither paid me anything 
for my contributions — not even the dollar apiece 


178 John Burroughs Talks’ 

which I asked. However, that did n’t trouble me. 
I was glad enough to see what I had written in print. 

“When I was at the old farm in the summer of 
1860 I wrote an essay that I called ‘Expression,’ and 
sent it to the ‘Atlantic.’ Emerson was the bright 
particular literary star about which I revolved at 
that time, and I was unconsciously influenced by 
him in writing my essay. It was stamped with his 
manner, yet it really came from the inside of me 
and so had a sort of genuineness and value. In fact, 
I think it was quite a remarkable thing for a young 
man of twenty-three to do. 

“James Russell Lowell, the editor of the ‘At- 
lantic,’ imagined some one was trying to palm off on 
the magazine an early essay of Emerson’s which he 
had not seen, but, after investigating and satisfying 
himself that such was not the case, he accepted it. 
I was greatly elated when a check came for thirty 
dollars — five dollars a page. I shall never forget 
that check. I thought I was launched then and I 
wrote with more ardor than ever, but the next essay 
I sent to the ‘Atlantic’ came back. Most of what I 
submitted to other periodicals met the same fate. 

“Thus far there had been little originality in my 
writing. I would be impressed by what I read in 
some book, and then I would write an essay that 
would be a kind of echo of my reading. Now I real- 
ized that I ought to have an individuality of my 
own. So I abandoned the Emersonian style and the 


Reading and Writing 179 

philosophical themes and began dealing with rustic 
topics like haying, sugar-making, and stone walls. 
Nevertheless, a suggestion of Emerson often crops 
out in my writings to this day. His beautiful soul 
shines like a star in our literary firmament. He and 
Whitman and Carlyle were the three men who 
appealed to me more than any others of my time. 

“I wrote considerable poetry as a young man, but 
the verse form of expression hampered my thought. 
Rhyme and rhythm never flowed through my mind 
easily. My poems seemed to me manufactured 
rather than spontaneous, and a time came when I 
wrote no more poetry and destroyed most of what 
I had done previously. 

“Three of my early poems found their way into 
print. One of them was addressed to a friend who had 
been visiting me at the old farm. When he went 
away, it left me kind of sentimental and lonesome, 
I suppose, and I put my feelings into verse. An- 
other poem, entitled ‘Loss and Gain/ came out in 
the ‘Independent/ ‘Waiting’ was the name I gave 
the third, and that has become well known. I can’t 
say as much for any of the other verses I have written, 
either in my youth or later when I resumed writing 
poetry. So I am practically a man of a single poem. 

“ ‘Waiting’ dates back to 1862 , when I was twenty- 
five. I was not prospering, the outlook was any- 
thing but encouraging, and it was a very gloomy 
period of my life. Besides, the Civil War was raging. 


180 John Burroughs Talks 

I was thinking I ought to join the army, but my 
wife was very much opposed to that, and so were 
my folks. I was teaching school at Olive in Ulster 
County and was reading medicine in the office of the 
village doctor with the notion of becoming a physi- 
cian. One evening, as I sat in the little back room of 
the doctor’s office, I paused in my study of anatomy, 
and wrote the poem, which begins — 

“‘Serene, I fold my hands and wait, 

Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea; 

I rave no more ’gainst Time or Fate, 

For lo! my own shall come to me.* 

“The poem was written as a comfort to myself 
and it was more felt and more spontaneous than 
anything else I ever put into verse. Because it 
voiced a real feeling, it has touched others. The 
idea that what is good for us will come, and that we 
need not be uneasy or in haste, has proved true in 
my own case. Much good has come to me that I had 
no reason to expect — come just as a matter of luck 
in the unfolding of the great world life. 

“I’ve got many things by indirection. The first 
hummingbird’s nest I ever found was found by 
chance. I was fishing down a little stream in the 
woods and my hook got caught in the limb of a tree. 
When I pulled down my line, there was the nest on 
the branch. Yes, much good comes to me without 
forethought. I don’t compel it to come. I don’t 
get it by force. It floats in on me some way, inde- 
pendent of my mind and will. 


Reading and Writing 181 

“The theme of the poem accorded with the re- 
ligious ideas of my people. They were Old School 
Baptists who believed in predestination, foreordi- 
nation, and that sort of thing. I inherited their 
feeling, but I was n’t so theological. It took the 
shape with me that you see in the poem. It is pre- 
destination watered down, or watered up. 

“‘Waiting’ was published in the ‘Knickerbocker 
Magazine,’ but it attracted no attention until, many 
years later, Whittier put it in his ‘Songs of Three 
Centuries.’ Since then it has kept floating around 
and has won wide popularity. Every once in a while 
it makes a tour of the newspapers. Sometimes they 
give it a new title, or drop my name, or change lines, 
or add verses, or subtract them. Recently the ‘Con- 
gregationalism printed it under the title ‘Serenity* 
and credited it to the ‘British Weekly.’ In the usual 
version there is one less verse than in the original. 
But that verse was unnecessary and the poem is 
stronger without it. 

“Some time ago a Rhode Island manufacturer 
printed the poem in a leaflet to hand about. I sup- 
pose doing that was a relief to him from the grind of 
business. I understand that the Theosophists swear 
by the poem. I hear from it a great deal. People 
say to me, ‘That poem has been more to me than 
anything else in my life.’ They almost sleep with it 
under their pillows. The religious people are par- 
ticularly fond of it. A minister wrote to me the 


182 John Burroughs Talks 

other day of how it had ‘steadied his hand at the 
helm ’ and that sort of thing. 

“I didn’t start into the bird business until the 
spring of 1863. I was twenty-five or twenty-six years 
old before birds began to interest me much. At that 
time I was teaching near West Point, and one day 
I went to the West Point library saying to myself 
that I’d know something about birds. I was 
fortunate enough to strike a copy of Audubon, and 
he opened a new world to me. He had adventures 
with birds, and I could n’t resist the contagion of 
his delight. 

“I went into the woods with new interest, new 
enthusiasm. The locality was very rich in bird life, 
and as soon as my eyes were opened a little, I found 
new birds everywhere. My vision was sharpened, and 
birds I’d passed by before I saw now at once. Be- 
sides, the current no sooner started to flow in that 
direction than I discovered that I could recall all the 
birds I’d known as a boy. There they were, photo- 
graphed on my memory. Audubon turned my mind 
in the bird direction and brought all I’d observed 
to the surface. 

“That fall, in the first flush of my pleasure study- 
ing birds, I wrote my first nature essay. 

“About 1859, when I was contributing to the 
‘Saturday Press,’ I ran across some of Walt Whit- 
man’s poems which appeared in the same paper, and 
they attracted me instantly. My first book, pub- 


Reading and Writing 183 

lished in 1867 while I was living in Washington, was 
about him. 

“I was a clerk in the Treasury Department. The 
work was light. All I had to do was to keep track 
of the money that went in and out of a vault I 
guarded. Sometimes I would n’t be occupied over 
half an hour in a whole day, and as I sat at my high 
mahogany desk facing the iron wall of the vault, I 
had much time to think my own thoughts and to 
write about nature. The vault gave me a good sur- 
face to rebound from, and my fancy bounded back 
to green things. 

“I wrote from recollection. There was no de- 
pendence on notes. I never could write from notes. 
I have to write from a fresh impulse. The things 
that belong to me stick to me. It was in the Treasury 
that I wrote my first nature book, ‘Wake-Robin,’ 
which appeared in 1871, when I was thirty-four years 
old. This and other nature books that I produced 
as the years passed gradually gave me a reputation 
as a literary naturalist. 

“After I established myself beside the Hudson, 
I did my writing for a time in the stone house. Then 
I erected my little outdoor study to get congenial 
seclusion for putting my thoughts on paper. 

“Most of my writing has been done in the fall and 
winter. I write very little in the spring. I seldom 
write anything but letters in May, and I don’t 
seriously begin work until July. I guess I’m too 


184 John Burroughs Talks 

sappy in the springtime. I ’m like the trees — the 
sap starts running, things are in their formative 
stage, and it’s a time to soak up and absorb. I lie 
around under the genial influence of the earth and 
sky, and I hear the birds sing and find out what 
they are doing. 

“I use ordinary steel stub pens for writing, and 
my favorite penholders are those X make myself of 
cat-tails. I gather the cat-tails in the swamp, and 
when the stems are dry, I cut them up into the proper 
lengths. These penholders are very light, and I can 
easily push the pens into the pith. Once I got a 
fountain pen and used it two or three days. Then I 
went back to my beloved cat- tail. That suited me 
best. 

“As I became better known to the public, I’d 
get invitations to go to all sorts of places, and some- 
times I went, but oftener I did n’t. One such invi- 
tation took me up to Twilight Park, but I could n’t 
stand it and had to fly. The folks there wanted me 
to be clever, and they kept me on the stretch all the 
time. They thought that a man who was a writer 
could be unfailingly brilliant without an effort. 
‘Oh!’ they’d say, ‘he’s the feller. Go for him. He’s 
chuck full of wit.’ 

“ But I have no social gifts. I was just a stick at 
their parties. I could n’t go skating lightly along 
over things the way they expected me to. The last 
scheme they got going up there was to write some 


Reading and Writing 185 

epitaphs to put on a lot of stumps in one of the fields 
of the vicinity. I don’t go loaded, and I could n’t 
have written an epitaph such as they wanted to save 
my life. So I came away in a hurry. 

“I’m not a ready writer in a professional sense. 
I can’t write fiction at all, but must confine myself 
to that which I personally see or feel. If I go for a 
ramble in the woods, it’s not to gather material for 
an essay. No, I go to poke about and enjoy myself. 

“Nor have I taken kindly to suggested topics for 
articles. The thing I’m asked to write about is just 
the thing I don’t want to write about. But occasion- 
ally, when the request was in harmony with my own 
interests, and especially if the hook was baited, I’ve 
supplied the article. Money in itself, however, has 
never been the inducement that has called forth my 
writings for periodicals or book publishers; and, in 
time, the circulation that my books attained paid 
me better than if I ’d written pot-boilers. 

Last autumn I went to Cambridge to spend a 
few months, and while there I edited a collection 
of nature poems. I was n’t able to find anything in 
verse about certain of the birds and flowers that I 
thought ought to be represented, or else nothing that 
was true to the facts. So I said to myself, ‘Now you 
know about these things; why don’t you write about 
them yourself?’ So I got to making rhymes, and 
I wrote fourteen poems, so called. It was a bad 
attack, but presently it was over and I was ready 
for prose again. 


186 John Burroughs Talks 

“ Recently I’ve been taking down some of my 
old books in the study here — books written 
many generations ago. They have long been fa- 
vorites of mine; and after all it is the old books — 
the classics — that are best. 

“I’ve reread Boswell’s ‘Johnson’ several times. 
It is so filled with the presence of the living man that 
it has almost the charm of the spoken word. A 
similar book, which I never tire of, is Eckermann’s 
‘Conversations with Goethe.’ It is very suggestive 
■ — very rich. I always find something new in it. 

“There’s much in the letters of Edward Fitz- 
gerald that appeals to me. He lived a very simple 
life, although he had ample means; and he had such 
a liking for seclusion that he seldom saw even his 
closest friends and relations. We find him saying 
in a letter, after the death of a brother, ‘I have not 
been inside his gate for three years, yet I loved him 
and he loved me.’ He did n’t want the current of 
his life interrupted by going visiting or being visited. 
He was very shy, and the shyness creeps out in his 
letters. They are written without any attempt to 
write, and are delightful. 

“Very few people write good letters. Robert 
Louis Stevenson did pretty well in a way, but there 
is n’t much meat or substance to them. Perhaps that 
is because he never was alone. He had great social 
talent — the very thing from which Fitzgerald 
shrank. 


Reading and Writing 187 

“A good book of travel like Kennan’s ‘Tent Life 
in Siberia’ always attracts me. It has a flavor like 
an onion compared with the frozen turnip of the 
average novel. Parkman’s ‘Oregon Trail’ has 
similar charm. Then there is Darwin’s ‘Naturalist’s 
Voyage Round the World,’ which I read again and 
again. All Darwin’s works have a human and al- 
most poetic side. He makes you feel the fascination 
of the power and mystery of nature. 

“Aside from Whitman, the poet I go to oftenest 
is Wordsworth. I take down Emerson oftener than 
any other New England poet. I’ve been looking 
through Bryant. A great deal of what he wrote is 
rather slow and ponderous, but there’s some real 
poetry — his ‘Waterfowl,’ for instance, and ‘Thana- 
topsis.’ No poet is always inspired and elevated. 
Even Wordsworth is so only once in a while. 

“White’s ‘Natural History of Selborne’ I didn’t 
read till I was nearly forty. I had long known of the 
book, but never got to really read it before. It made 
me want to see his village. It ’s a book to sip, a book 
to let linger on the tongue. It’s a book for the fire- 
side and quiet contemplation. Then you get the 
sweetness of it and feel its simple, wholesome quality. 
It does n’t jibe with hurry and heat and business 
strife. I like to pick it up in the autumn. When I 
first build my study fire at the approach of cold 
weather, I enjoy taking White’s ‘Selborne’ and 
reading a little. Yes, it ’s a delicious book. 


188 John Burroughs Talks 

“Thoreau appealed to me less than Gilbert White. 
I must have been about twenty when I read his 
‘Walden.’ Its crispness and pungency appealed to 
me, and I envied the writer’s indifference to human 
beings. I have always read him with keen interest, 
but I don’t owe him any great debt. 

“John Muir is an able writer, but he is n’t to 
be put alongside of Thoreau. He has n’t Thoreau ’s 
art or style. There’s a great deal of glorification of 
scenery in what he writes. ‘Glorious’ is one of his 
favorite words. His laudation is good, but you tire of 
it. He is no philosopher, and the old Scotch Presby- 
terianism clings to him and hampers him. He is crazy 
about trees and wild scenes. He is mountain-drunk 
— that’s what he is! 

“We have some excellent American writers on 
nature who love the things of which they tell us. 
Most nature authors, however, evidently start out 
saying to themselves, ‘Now I want to write a book.’ 
That ’s their first thought. 

“I’m glad that in my youth I escaped the flood 
of cheap fiction that now submerges the reading 
public. We Americans are getting so we do no 
serious reading. But stories never have appealed to 
me nearly as strongly as reality, and yet I think I ’m 
a good novel-reader when I start. The starting is 
the trouble. I ’m like a boy going in swimming — I 
hesitate and hold myself back, but after the first 
plunge it’s fine. I think I always laugh in the right 


Reading and Writing 189 

places. At least, I know I always cry in the right 
places. Yet as I get older it’s harder and harder for 
me to feel interest in the merely fanciful. 

“The ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ gave me pleasure when 
I first read it, and I return to it with satisfaction. I 
never could read Cooper. He seems crude and 
artificial. In my youth I enjoyed Scott, the delight 
of all generous boys. I liked Irving too. He was a 
very genial, human man, but I don’t read him any 
more. I have found great pleasure in Hawthorne. 
His style does n’t obtrude. It has the quality of 
obliterating itself, and has atmosphere, which is 
something you don’t find in the works of most 
American novelists. 

“I can’t read Dickens. To me he has an air of 
insincerity and make-believe. What his characters 
do and say is transparent acting. 

“As for the modern novelists, I can hardly force 
myself to read them. Perhaps I ought to except 
Barrie. He’s a capital fellow. I enjoyed his ‘Window 
in Thrums.’ 

“It seems to me strange, the antagonism many of 
our writers, especially the younger men, feel toward 
Mr. Howells. I think his views of literature are unim- 
peachable. I agree with him that the artist must 
be true, the first thing he does. He must make what 
he relates like the reality, to begin with. Then he 
can give his imagination rein If you have a feeling 
about anything, let us have it. You may not be an 


190 John Burroughs Talks 

artist, and your work will fail on that account; but, 
however that may be, it’s only your own impres- 
sions that have any value. 

“Talk about the ancients! Why should we pat- 
tern after them? They painted things as they knew 
and saw them. They produced themselves. They 
looked inward, not outward. That’s why their 
work had power. They did n’t go tagging after some 
bygone civilization. Neither should we. 

“That a book should be real is a prime essential; 
and besides there should be a charm derived from 
the personality of the writer. An artist must have 
an atmosphere that bathes the scene he describes, 
and this must come from his own individuality. 

“I wonder if Howells knows how much he offends 
the women by his portrayal of them. He lays so 
much stress on their weaknesses and lacks that they 
are down on him almost without exception. 

“I’ve read his ‘World of Chance/ The reality 
of it is astonishing. I could smell New York. I 
could hear the rattle of the streets. There were just 
such people in the book as I ’ve seen on the elevated 
trains. But he did n’t make me care for them. I 
wished we had more of Mr. Howells there. He could 
afford to give himself to his readers much more 
freely than he does. 

“Another of his novels that I read was ‘The Day 
of Their Wedding,’ but with only languid interest. 
It is a photograph of small, commonplace things. 


Reading and Writing 191 

One day I bought his ‘London Films,’ but when I 
looked into it I quickly concluded that it was too 
filmy for me and sent it back. I loved him a good 
deal better after reading his New England recol- 
lections, because I got closer to him and he dealt 
with people who in general had attractive person- 
alities. 

“I wish Howells had come to live near me beside 
the Hudson. I think he might if it had n’t been so 
far from New York. He’s fond of the country. One 
of the frequent sights on the river is a colony of 
canal-boats in tow behind a tug. Families live on 
board them, and you can see the washing flying. 
If Howells had lived where I do, he’d have used 
that life in some way. What a pretty romance a man 
of his delicate perceptions could make out of it! 

“I get considerable periodical literature, but 
delve into it with a good deal of caution. Most of 
it seems made for people who have an idle hour. If 
one does n’t look out these days he gets snowed 
under with it — completely clogged. I’m really 
thankful when I can look through a magazine table 
of contents and find nothing that I feel I must read.” 


XII 

September , 1901 
SLABSIDES IN THE WOODS 

On my next visit to Burroughs I spent a day and a 
night at Slabsides with him. The weather was chilly, 
and in the evening we had a good fire blazing on the 
hearth. My companion occasionally poked the fire 
and adjusted the burning sticks. 

He asked me which I thought was the better of 
two titles he was considering for his next book. 
Most of his books seem to me to be named very 
felicitously, and the titles of the individual essays 
often have a piquant charm that is quite enticing. 

“I’ve been living here since early spring,” he 
said, “except when I was up at the old Catskills 
home in the summer. I used to help my brother’s 
family in the haying, but I go there to rest and re- 
lax now. I like to sit on the front steps or lie in the 
hammock under the maples that shadow the house. 
I’ve done very little work on the old farm the last 
two years. Every day I would go for a long walk with 
the dogs for company. I would climb the great hill 
behind the house — and a hard climb it is — and 
each morning I would wash my hands and face just 
as I did when I was a boy in what I call the ‘big 


Slabsides in the Woods 193 

wash-basin * — the tank that receives the flow of 
spring water at the back door.” 

He was in a reminiscent mood and our conver- 
sation drifted into a recalling of the story of Slab- 
sides. “It was in 1894,” he said, “that I got in- 
terested in the swamp back here in the rough wood- 
land. It looked quite barbaric with its brush and 
stumps and muddy pools, but I could see that the 
land was very rich and only needed clearing and 
draining to be capable of yielding wonderful crops. 
So I induced a rich man of the neighborhood who 
owned the swamp to take hold of the work; for what 
better use can be made of surplus money than to im- 
prove the face of the earth by making it more produc- 
tive? He had the trees and brush cut off, the stumps 
and roots pulled up, and ditches dug along the 
borders of the swamp to carry off the water. That 
was a good start, but the stumps and rubbish lay 
there in a chaos that looked like the wreck of worlds. 
I tried to have the man set fire to the stuff, and he 
would n’t because he was afraid the fire might 
spread to the woods. 

“When winter came he hired three young men to 
clear the swamp, and they built a hut of unplaned 
boards among the trees near by. They rigged up the 
inside with a stove and a little furniture, and there 
they lived. But they had been at work only a week 
when, one morning, their hut blew up. The roof 
flew off, the boards on the sides were splintered or 


194 John Burroughs Talks 

broken away, and the stove was smashed. The 
three young men all happened to be outside at the 
time. If they’d been in the hut, they’d have been 
killed instantly. They were from a town some dis- 
tance away, and the West Park hoodlums resented 
having the swamp work done by outsiders. To make 
the matter clear to the intruders, some of them had 
put dynamite down the stovepipe. The young men 
were frightened and discouraged and threw up their 
job. Probably they got nothing for their week’s work 
because they did n’t complete their contract. 

“The owner of the swamp was worth seven mil- 
lions. He had no children to inherit his money, and 
he certainly could n’t take it with him when he died. 
What a pity that he should be so timid in his use of 
it and so close in his bargains! I thank Heaven that 
I ’m not rich — riches are so apt to dry up a man’s 
sympathies. 

“Things had come to a standstill in the woodland 
hollow, and my next move was to make a deal with 
a young farmer commonly known as ‘Amasy ’ to 
help me reclaim the swamp and raise crops on it. 
I bought a hundred acres there in the woods, turned 
eighty over to Amasy, and retained the rest, includ- 
ing the swamp, for myself. We made a road over the 
ridge to connect with the highway that went down 
to the village. Next we civilized the swamp, which 
was a three-acre level rimmed around with rock. 
By blasting an outlet in this rim, we got rid of a good 
deal of the surplus water. 


Slabsides in the Woods 195 

“It cost me sixty dollars an acre to clear off the 
brush, stumps, and roots. No doubt the swamp had 
been chopped over many times, for in one spot we 
found a little pile of cordwood directly under the 
stump of a large tree. The tree had grown right over 
the pile and must have started growing at least a 
hundred years before. Close by, three feet under the 
muck, we dug up a Dutch gin bottle in which some 
old-time workman had carried his drink to the woods. 
We had to be very careful not to let the fire get away 
from us when we were burning the rubbish in dry 
weather. It did escape once, and we had a terrific 
time fighting it. If a shower had n’t come to our aid, 
it would have spread no one knows how far. 

“I early discovered on the borders of the swamp 
two springs of delicious cold water. It seemed to 
me as good as Catskill water, and I came up from 
Riverby nearly every day to get a drink. Never 
before had I gone through a hard summer’s work 
and kept so well as I did that year, and I attribute 
my thriving in large part to the water of those springs. 
The nymph of one of the springs was very shy, for 
the water got rily when you came to the edge and 
looked in. This was because the soil was porous and 
shaky, and your footsteps affected the channels of 
the water down under the surface. To cure the 
defect, I took a keg, knocked out the ends, and set it 
down around the spring. 

“From a shoulder of rock at one side of the swamp 


196 John Burroughs Talks 

a very fine echo is to be had when atmospheric con- 
ditions are right. Your voice comes bounding back 
from the cliff with amazing distinctness, but you 
are too near for long remarks. You have to speak 
quickly if you wish the echo to repeat more than two 
syllables. 

“We got one corner of the swamp cleared up early 
enough that first season to attempt raising a crop 
on it. The ground was a black mass of mouldy vege- 
table matter, and you could dig down anywhere and 
find water. It was so soft that a horse could n’t walk 
on it. In order to make ready for planting, I got two 
men to pull the plough while I followed behind and 
guided it. If the soil had n’t been very loose and 
light, I ’d have needed more power. The work made 
the men puff, but we turned over quite a piece. 

“Then we thought we’d try a horse, and we 
fastened some squares of board on his hoofs — put 
the horse on snowshoes, so to speak. We expected he 
would be troubled by his new footgear at first, but 
he got the hang of it at once. He seemed to under- 
stand that he must walk wide. So he spread him- 
self accordingly, and flap, flap, he went, up and down 
the field. We planted some potatoes, and set out a 
good-sized patch of celery. I planned to put the 
whole swamp to celery the next year and was con- 
fident I could make a good many hundred dollars. 
But I foresaw that the time when it would prove a 
real gold mine would be in a dry year. I said to my- 


Slabsides in the Woods 197 

self: *1 ain’t praying for it, but I’ll be ready when 
it comes/ You see I could aways keep my swamp 
moist by regulating the flow at the outlet. 

“Even if I did n’t raise any crops, I calculated 
that the ownership of the swamp made me enor- 
mously wealthy. Agricultural authorities say that 
muck is worth two dollars a load, and I had millions 
of loads in my swamp. 

“The work of reclaiming that wild land seemed to 
stir the aboriginal instincts in me, and I found my- 
self longing for a wigwam or cabin to which I might 
retire when I was in the mood and live a life of rude 
simplicity. For more than a score of years I had 
been perched high on the bank of a great river, in 
sight of all the world and exposed to every wind 
that blew, with a horizon-line that swept over half a 
county. 

“The publicity of Riverby was n’t congenial. I 
had grown restless and dissatisfied and pined for a 
different environment where there ’d be no river 
with yachts of millionaires flaunting up and down it, 
no steamboats, no railroad trains. The Hudson is 
a great highway. It has n’t the domestic and winning 
qualities that a smaller stream has. Its commercial 
aspect is always intruding, and the dweller on its 
banks finds its disturbing sights and sounds continu- 
ally jarring on his sensibilities. 

“So for one reason and another I concluded to 
withdraw into the wilderness, and I built me this 


198 John Burroughs Talks 

rustic house. I did all the planning and helped with 
the mason work and carpentering. The cabin is 
better than the log house my Grandfather Burroughs 
built when he moved to Roxbury, and it’s better 
than the log house built by any one else’s grand- 
father. I think if my grandfather appeared and 
looked over my swamp-side cabin, he would reprove 
me for living too luxuriously. 

“Whoever puts up a house nowadays and wants 
an open fire ought to build his own chimney. The 
art of chimney-building is gone out. Our modern 
architects and masons make chimneys with sole 
regard to the ornamental effect — not for the pur- 
pose of having a good fire. Before I built the one 
for my cabin, I went around hunting for old chim- 
neys, and I ’d poke my head into the fireplaces and 
look up them. I think I discovered the secret of a 
good draft. It is to have the throat of the chimney 
long and narrow and the flue above very big. My 
chimney is at the end of the cabin and shows outside 
all the way up. The stones of which it is made were 
picked up close about. I could n’t ask for one that 
would draw better. If you put a newspaper in the 
fire the ascending air-current catches it and takes it 
right up through. 

“The chairs, stools, shelves, and other furnishings 
are my own handiwork, and the material for them 
is chiefly sticks of Nature’s own fashioning which I 
found right in the woods. The dining- table was per- 



Coming from the Cold-Storage Cavern 








Water from the Spring 




Slabsides in the Woods 199 

haps my most ambitious attempt at carpentering, 
and it was all right except that you couldn’t get 
your knees under it. That defect was remedied later. 

“You remember I used to store such victuals as 
I wanted to keep cool in the natural cavern that 
opens down into the rocks back of the house. I had 
a ladder for getting in and out of it; but carrying 
things up and down that was rather inconvenient, 
and after a while I built a spring-house to serve 
instead of the cave. 

“I’d always wanted to own some sort of a place 
in the woods. For years I’d been dickering with a 
man way back in the Catskills. I wanted to put up 
a log or a stone house there, but he could n’t give me 
a clear title to the land — a glen among the moun- 
tains. I was attracted by the purity of the elements 
there. They were purer than in any other valley in 
the world. It was a spot untouched by man — water 
perfect, air perfect, seclusion perfect — could n’t 
be beat anywhere. The brook that flowed through 
the woods over the washed stones was absolutely 
clean; and there were mountains on all sides — a 
great brotherhood of them joining hands and circling 
about you. 

“But my surroundings at Slabsides are a little 
savager than they would have been in that Cat- 
skill valley. There everything is covered with trees 
and verdure. At Slabsides I am hemmed in by rocks 
and rugged cliffs. Of course there are places in the 


200 John Burroughs Talks 

Catskills where the rocks frown on you; but my 
swamp gives me a rare combination — you jump 
at once from beetling crag right down to garden 
mould; and, though I miss the great trees, this 
swamp soil, the slow accretion of ages, is to me very 
suggestive and impressive. 

“In fact it has been the land that has given me 
most pleasure in my wilderness home. It looks 
different from other land. It is land I have made and 
is much more precious than any I could buy. Before 
I took hold of it there was nothing in this hollow of 
the woods except a bit of untamed nature, and my 
land was buried beneath trees, stumps, and bog. I 
had to fight for it, and land you get that way you 
value. Yes, it is wonderful land — land I’ve created 
myself. If some one had given me a nice piece of 
tillable land, I would n’t have thought anything of 
it as compared with my swamp. 

“Some of my friends were troubled because I 
called my cabin Slabsides. Most people imagined 
the name was a joke. Those who thought I was in 
earnest protested. They said such a name was too 
slangy — too rough. But there is nothing disagree- 
able or unpoetic about a slab, and as slabs are the 
most conspicuous feature of the cabin construction, 
why should n’t the dwelling take its name from 
them? I could n’t give it a pretty name like Rock 
Haven or Echo Lodge. Cragfoot was suggested, and 
that isn’t bad — still, it’s a little too pretentious. 


Slabsides in the Woods 201 

“ Give a place an ugly name and the name always 
sticks. That’s an advantage — and after a time the 
crudeness wears away and the name comes to have 
some other association. Slabsides has a Western 
flavor. They give real names out there — names full 
of rugged meaning. But you take genteel people 
with money, and they can’t stand that sort of thing. 
If I could have got a good birch name, I would 
have liked it, but nothing exactly suitable occurred 
to me. There’s a good flavor about birch. I felt 
the birch when I was young and I’ve had a senti- 
ment of attachment for it ever since. 

“The first time I visited the swamp I saw a coon 
not far from where I put up my house. I don’t know 
but that ought to have given the place a name. Coon 
Hollow — how would that do? 

“The name I selected was n’t one that the natives 
of the region stumbled over or made any mistakes 
about. I had a rough-and-ready place, with which 
a rough-and-ready name was in perfect harmony. 
I would n’t have anything that had the least taint 
of sentimentalism or affectation, and I think a coarse- 
fibered designation like Slabsides grows constantly 
more significant and pleasing. A name wants to be 
something like your boots or your coat — not too 
good to wear every day. It’s a great mistake to give 
babies or homes fancy names. A pretty name always 
suggests effeminacy some way or other. 

“I built Slabsides for a place of occasional retire- 


202 John Burroughs Talks 

ment when I got sick of the more civilized world. 
Also I thought it would be a good place for my 
friends to hibernate in. But I stayed here a good 
deal of the time in the summer and fall of ’96 right 
after its erection. My wife had found difficulty in 
getting a girl to suit her, and she complained of the 
amount of housework she had to do. So I said I’d 
halve the work by going over to Slabsides to live, 
and that arrangement seemed to suit her very well. 
The next year I made my home here almost without 
a break beginning the latter part of March. 

“An article in a New York magazine said that I 
went to Slabsides to stay because Mrs. Burroughs 
swept me out of the house at Riverby. Of course 
that was a humorous exaggeration, but she is an 
immaculate housekeeper, and there’s no question 
that with my easy-going habits I sometimes got in 
her way. I fail in various essentials, as she views 
things, to come up to her standard, and she does n’t 
hesitate to point out my failings.” 

(On an earlier occasion Burroughs said : “ A scolding 
woman I can’t stand. When a woman begins to scold, 
I take to the woods.” 

The remark had no reference to Slabsides, though 
he very likely had Mrs. Burroughs in mind. To 
“take to the woods” simply meant that he got out 
of the disturbed area as quickly as possible.) 

“When I went up to Slabsides in the first mild 
weather of March to stay until the next winter, I had 


Slabsides in the Woods 203 

the grip, but the air and water and simple living soon 
cured me. Every day I went down to the village for 
my mail, and, before I returned, I spent an hour or 
two at Riverby to keep track of things there. I 
always walked back and forth. I’d given up keeping 
a horse. It was too much trouble. I like a horse if 
some one else drives and takes care of him. Appar- 
ently I was made to be a gentleman. Looking after 
a horse is n’t to my taste. Cleaning him, for in- 
stance, simply transfers the dirt from the horse to 
you, and the horsy smell hangs about you for a 
week. 

“I did n’t lock my cabin at first. I had a latch- 
string on the front door, and the place was free to 
all whether I was there or not. ‘Go in, look around, 
and help yourselves,’ the house said; and the natives 
did drift in some to see what they could see. There 
were no gold watches in it and no silverware, and 
I used to say, ‘You must n’t have wealth and then 
you won’t be robbed.’ But some of my stuff was 
taken later and I felt obliged to put locks in the 
doors. 1 

“When I’d lived in the cabin about six months, 
I undertook to mop the floor. It was a new venture 
and not altogether a success. First I rubbed soap 
on the grease-spots, then poured on hot water, then 
sozzled the mop up and down in a pail of water and 
afterward wrung it out into the pail. Next I swashed 
it around on the floor, and lastly, I sopped up the 


204 John Burroughs Talks 

moisture that remained, just as I had seen my mother 
do, long ago. I left a good deal of the candle-wicking 
that the mop was made of sticking in the slivers of 
the floor boards. As you mop, you don’t want to 
walk where you have cleaned, but I got myself in a 
corner and could n’t retreat. That was poor tactics 
— poor housewifery. When you keep house yourself, 
you come to appreciate these little points of manage- 
ment by which you come out right. I concluded I 
should know better how to mop next time — if there 
ever was a next time. 

“That mopping was a good deal like the experience 
I had at Riverby in making a cherry pudding once 
when my wife was away. I’d seen her do it a good 
many times. She used canned cherries and cooked 
them with a crust on top. I poured my cherries in 
and then stirred the dough all right, though I did 
get my hands badly stuck up, but when it came to 
putting the dough into place for a crust, I could n’t 
make it float. I got so I could handle the dough 
pretty well, but no sooner did I let go of it than it 
plunged down into the cherry juice out of sight. I 
tried again and again. I had the science of the thing 
correct enough, but I had n’t the art. Finally I 
gave up and baked it as it was with the crust some- 
where down in the juice. The cherries turned out 
first-rate, but the crust was a mess that the dog 
could n’t eat. 

“I did things very much simpler at Slabsides. If 


Slabsides in the Woods 205 

I wanted a cherry pudding, I soaked some crackers, 
put the cherries on them, and there I had my pud- 
ding. The crackers did for crust, and it tasted very 
good. 

“You know my brother Hiram. He’s two years 
my senior, and was the oldest of the children in my 
boyhood home. He excelled in a good many rustic 
tasks, but he was a dreamer and could n’t make 
farming pay. He wasn’t cut out to succeed. He’s 
enthusiastic, moody, visionary, rash. He has all 
the weaknesses of a man of genius without the 
genius. 

“After father’s death he tried to run the old farm, 
but he had no business acumen and everybody took 
advantage of him. Besides, he was always getting 
some wild notion into his head — he ’d send off to 
Canada for a hundred-dollar sheep, or go into some 
other extravagance. He was a bachelor and not 
very energetic, and things kept going downhill. I 
had gone on a note for four or five thousand dollars 
in order to prevent the farm from going out of the 
family. But that did n’t mend matters, and I was 
obliged to take the place out of Hiram’s hands. 

“My wife had protested against my going on the 
note, and I knew pretty well, myself, I should 
lose, but the affair concerned my brother and my 
old home, and that was where my sentiment got 
the better of my business capacity. The transac- 
tion alienated my brother too — he could see things 


206 John Burroughs Talks 

only in his own light — and I was very sorry, for 
I loved him. 

“However, his view became mellower later, and 
the trouble healed. He took to keeping bees on quite 
a large scale, and I know one year he was expecting 
to make three or four hundred dollars out of them, 
but the season was very bad for bees in the Cat- 
skills and they did n’t store enough honey to carry 
them through the winter. I wished he could bring 
his beehives down to Riverby and live with me, and 
I said to myself, ‘If my wife would agree I’d send 
for him to-morrow,’ but she would n’t hear of such 
a thing. 

“After I’d been staying at Slabsides a few months, 
I told him we’d live together here in the woods. He 
was entirely out of money and would have gone to 
the poorhouse if I had n’t taken him. He brought 
a few hens and about forty skips of bees to Slabsides, 
and he had those bees so much on his mind that he 
was continually running off to fuss with them in the 
busiest days of grape-cutting, when he was needed 
to help me. Besides, he was corresponding with other 
bee-fanciers and swapping queens with them, and 
fooling around with improvements that wiped out 
all the profits. He’d pile his boxes of honey in the 
corner of the cabin living-room and leave the little 
cages for queen bees lying around on the chairs, and 
he ’d write bee memoranda in chalk on the walls. 

“I was the food-provider, the cook, and the house- 


Slabsides in the Woods 207 

keeper. He was forgetful and careless and would live 
on next to nothing rather than bother to get a meal 
himself. I ’d scold him for not thinking of any of the 
things that needed doing, but my words were wasted. 
Sometimes I ’d have a little fun telling him he ought 
to get married, and that there was a widow in the 
village who had her eye on him. However, he’d 
always been a bachelor, and you could n’t get him 
within ten miles of the lady. 

“We had little enough in common, but the tie of 
kinship was strong and we were glad to be together. 

“Hiram and I did n’t spend much time over house- 
work here in the woods. We studied to economize 
labor. We used wooden plates that were good for 
two or three meals. Then we’d throw them in the 
fire. To be sure they were thin and rather wobbly, 
and if you put anything wet on them they’d warp 
a little before we got done eating — still, they served 
very well. 

“When I first began to live here, I ate my dinner 
with a newspaper for a tablecloth, but I kept making 
improvements, and later covered my table with a 
white oilcloth. I got white oilcloth on purpose to 
make me feel compelled to keep it clean for the sake 
of appearances, if for nothing else. There’s an im- 
mense saving in the Slabsides way of living. I don’t 
have to go through any doors to get my victuals to 
the dining-room, as would be the case in most houses. 
N< , I can fetch my steak or chops from the coals to 
th 3 table in two jumps. 


208 John Burroughs Talks 

“I usually spend my mornings indoors, reading, 
writing, and thinking. About eleven o’clock I put 
my potatoes cooking, and at twelve I broil my meat 
and set on the dinner. If I am going to have beans 
instead of meat and potatoes, I start them at eight 
o’clock; and while I bake my intellectual beans my 
other beans are sizzling and ripening in the pot. 
Yes, sir! I can live here like a philosopher. 

“ When anybody comes to call and I see he is 
going to stay to dinner, I slyly slip an extra potato 
into the ashes and go on with the conversation. By 
and by I step out to the spring, where I have my 
larder sunken in the cold water, get my shad or a 
steak or some chops, and have dinner ready before 
the caller knows what has happened. 

“Afternoons I always walk through the woods, or 
help the men I ’ve hired to take care of the swamp- 
land crops. Just a little back in the woods is a crick 
called the Shattega. It’s very wild and picturesque 
as it winds through the forest, with the tall trees on 
each side reflected in the quiet water. If you keep 
along it for a while you come to an oval sheet of 
water a half-mile across known as Black Pond. 

“ On the crick I formerly had a boat — one I ’d 
built and used in 1877 to make a voyage down the 
Pepacton from the Catskills. My dog and I often went 
to the boat and had a row. The dog would get very 
much excited about my paddling and sometimes he’d 
jump overboard to seize my oar. Then I’d take him 



Black Pond , a Favorite Resort near Slabsides 





The “ Hermit of Slabsides ” 



Slabsides in the Woods 209 

by the nape of the neck and lift him back into the 
boat, and he ’d shake the wetness out of his hair over 
everything, and I ’d have to give him a scolding. 

“ The boat has met with disaster. Some boys took 
it and let it float downstream, and when I found it 
the bottom was stove in. 

“ I go to the crick in May to hear the pine warblers 
and the water-thrushes. At the same time I see 
flocks of rusty blackbirds. They collect there in 
troops and have their concerts, and they are so tame 
that when I had my boat they’d let me row by close 
enough to see their yellow eyes. Now and then I 
catch a glimpse of a muskrat or a mink. It is a fav- 
orite resort of wild ducks of many different kinds. 
I’ve seen the stream alive with them. An otter fam- 
ily has its home somewhere along the crick, and when 
I go there in winter I see their tracks on the snow, 
but I ’ve never seen the creatures themselves. 

“A great many people come to call on me at Slab- 
sides, some by appointment and some without, some 
old friends and some strangers I’d never heard of. 
The young folks from the village are often over to 
picnic with me, and if celery is in season, I go out 
and bring in an armful from the swamp and we 
have a celery feast. Yes, company is pretty constant 
all through the warm weather. People come singly, 
in couples, in squads, and they come in clubs and 
schools. Feminine visitors are especially abundant, 
partly because the Vassar College girls at Pough- 


210 John Burroughs Talks 

keepsie have got the notion of calling frequently. 
The visitors have increased from year to year till 
they are something of a burden. There’s considerable 
spells when no day is without them. The place has 
a romantic appeal to their fancy, apparently. Why, 
two young artists were married on my piazza! 

“Among my visitors last year was Teddy Roose- 
velt, Jr. He stayed from Friday night to Monday 
noon and the boy wore me out with his energy. How 
he did scramble up the trees and the face of the 
cliffs, and how delighted he was with Slabsides, and 
what disgust he expressed with everything citified 
and un-American ! The little fellow amused me very 
much, he was so like a miniature copy of his father 
in his ideas and manners. 

“Another visitor who came and stopped over Sun- 
day was John Muir. He is a poet, prophet, man of 
science — a wonderful fellow. We forgot to eat and 
sleep, and time slipped past unnoticed — all on ac- 
count of his delightful talk. He is the incarnation 
of the spirit of the mountains. There’s a far-away 
look in his face and eyes as if he saw the heights and 
peaks beckoning to him. You miss in his books his 
personality and the spontaneity that glows in his 
talk. Some people have the gift of putting them- 
selves in what they write. But Muir has n’t it. You 
don’t get his best on the printed page. 

“He is looking everywhere through the country 
for marks of the ice overflow, and no matter where 


Slabsides in the Woods 211 

he searches he finds those marks. When he was a 
young fellow he attended a Western college, and not 
long after he finished his course he started out for a 
walk. He did n’t stop till he reached Florida, and 
he did n’t get back home for eighteen years. He 
wanted to see what God was doing in the world, and 
he’d only got an inkling of it in college. 

“Now he has a fruit farm in California, and he’s 
prosperous. He says he can make money anywhere, 
and that he has so much he does n’t know what he’s 
worth. He is n’t tied to his farm. From there he 
goes up to Alaska nearly every summer to live among 
the glaciers. When he gets sick, all he has to do is to 
go to Alaska and he gets well. Glaciers are his hobby. 
He can’t be long away from them without getting 
hungry for them. He takes a glacier just as other 
men take a plate of ice-cream. He knows all about 
flowers, and he knows geology from beginning to end. 
You ought to hear him tell his dog story. It is one 
of the few really good dog stories. But you don’t 
want to ask him to tell it unless you have plenty of 
time. He takes an hour to go through it, and you 
get the whole theory of glaciation thrown in, but it 
is fascinating. 

“When I shifted my home to the woods, the robins 
followed me. Song sparrows and chippies came too: 
and there are hosts of other birds that are native to 
the woods. I hear the scarlet tanager near my cabin 
every day in its song season. The tanager is a wood- 


212 John Burroughs Talks 

bird and does n’t go down into the cultivated land 
along the Hudson. At the same time the rose- 
breasted grosbeak is in song with its rich, soft warble, 
and so is the oven-bird. I like to watch the latter 
launch into the air. Often it will go up to a height 
of a hundred feet, and then it bursts into song and 
descends — just as if it were a rocket — first a 
vigorous upward flight, then an explosion of song 
high in air, then the gentle drift back to earth. 

“In the spring evenings I hear the piping of the 
wood frog, the leopard frog, the bullfrog, and, best 
of all, the song of the toad. The toad’s song is a 
guttural sort of music, but to me it is very sweet. 
While the old toad vocalizes, it sits half-body deep 
in the water. Its song is one of thankfulness and 
good-will. The sound is like the purring of the genii 
of the twilight. I wish some poet would put the song 
of the toad in his verses. 

“Other animal sounds at night are the voices of 
the owls and whip-poor-wills. One night I heard a 
strange whistling, shrill and high-pitched, that I 
could n’t account for. I rather suspect it was made 
by a coon, but I ’m not sure. 

“A story circulated at one time that we had a 
strange varmint there in the woods. People said 
that the creature had killed a horse in one place, 
fought with dogs in another, and maimed a calf in 
a third. It was the talk of all the region for ten days 
or two weeks, and many persons really believed that 


Slabsides in the Woods 213 

some animal which had escaped from a menagerie 
was roaming about. The woods were avoided by 
the timid, but there was nothing to the yarn. People 
seem to have a hunger for that sort of thing, and to 
crave it as a sauce for the prose of their daily events. 
So the story grows wonderfully when it once gets 
started. 

“ We had a little excitement in our cabin one night. 
I slept at one end of the alcove and Hiram at the 
other end, and I was awakened by his saying in a 
strained, unnatural voice, ‘John, there’s something 
in this room!’ 

“I started up and asked, ‘What is it?’ 

“‘Don’t get out of bed,’ Hiram cautioned me. 
‘It’s a sissing adder.’ 

“Then we heard it — ‘Sis-s-s-s-qt!’ — a dreadful 
sound in the darkness, and Hiram imagined he saw 
the snake with its swollen head crawling about the 
floor. Every few moments sounded that startling 
‘Sis-s-s-s-qt!’ Hiram was trying to light a match, 
but in his nervousness the matches broke. 

“I called to my dog, who slept somewhere about 
the house, ‘Nip, Nip, come here!’ 

“But Nip did not respond. Instead, the sissing 
creature came in my direction, and it did n’t stop till 
it was close to the bed. The next I knew it seemed 
to be attempting to crawl up the fly-netting which 
hung over the edges. I snatched at the fly-netting 
and cried out to frighten the varmint away. As it 


214 John Burroughs Talks 

crossed the floor I had heard a tapping of heavy nails, 
which made me certain that it was something with 
legs and not a snake. So my mind conjured up a 
vision of an animal of the toad or turtle kind — warty, 
misshapen, and horrible. I felt that things had come 
to a crisis. 

“Fortunately, just then Hiram succeeded in light- 
ing a match, and when its tiny flame shone out across 
the room, there we saw Nip pawing at the side of 
my bed. Some sudden affliction of catarrh had made 
him wheeze and cough in a manner entirely strange 
and unrecognizable. I confess that I was all in a per- 
spiration of excitement and fear, but now that the 
riddle was solved I laughed. Hiram, however, blew 
out his match and turned his face to the wall in 
disgust. 

“Half a dozen years or more before I built Slab- 
sides, I lost my watch one winter and I did n’t find 
it till the next spring. Meanwhile a cart-wheel had 
run over it. I did n’t much regret what had hap- 
pened, for it was a watch that had a habit of stopping 
once in a while three or four minutes and then going 
on again. As a result I often had to run to catch 
trains, and I suppose I hurt my health and shortened 
my life by the exertion that watch caused me. 

“I had very little use for a watch, anyway. I was 
able to estimate the time pretty accurately from my 
inner consciousness without knowing how I did it, 
and I fared very well without one until Hiram came 


Slabsides in the Woods 215 

to live at Slabsides with me. He wanted me to have 
a watch. So I bought one and got to depend on it; 
and really, after a while, I could n’t tell the time 
with any certainty, even by looking at the sun. 

“Hiram’s bees did n’t thrive in the Hudson valley, 
and after being here for three years he carried his 
hives back to the Catskills. But luck continues 
against him, though he is always hopeful and sees 
hundreds of dollars of profit in next year’s honey. 
I send him a check once in a while or he would fare 
hardly. 

“The whip-poor-wills begin to pipe about the 
middle of April, but are not in full song until the end 
of the month. They come very close to the house, 
and I hear some notes from them that would be 
strange to the ears of most people. Before they 
make any other sound they ‘quit, quit!’ just like 
a turkey. Then follows a preliminary cluck, and 
lastly they break into the familiar cry that gives 
them their name. The whip-poor-will makes its 
nest on the ground, and as it sits there its color and 
streaking are so like a piece of bark, and blend so 
well with the surroundings, that you never would see 
it if it did n’t start up before you. The bird is up 
and off like some great moth or bat. It has a very 
silent flight and makes no sound whatever — no 
more than if it were a shadow. Like all nocturnal 
birds its web of feathers is very downy and much 
softer than that of the day birds. In the case of the 


216 John Burroughs Talks 

owls that want to steal on their prey, this is a great 
help, but the whip-poor-wills feed on insects and 
I don’t understand why they should be so noise- 
less. 

“I often hear the little whinny of the screech owls, 
and the cry of the hoot owls off in the woods. One 
day I had with me here at the cabin a friend who 
could imitate the calls of a great many birds and 
animals exactly. While we were out walking, we sat 
down under a tree, and he gave the hoot of an owl. 
Two crows appeared on the scene instantly. The 
owls eat the crows’ eggs, and if the crows hear an owl 
hoot in the daytime, they all go and have a great 
powwow. They make such a noise that the owl 
wishes himself almost anywhere else. So when these 
two crows heard that call, they thought they had 
caught one of the robbers. 

“‘Come on, boys, here’s fun!’ they cried, and 
were after him at once. But when they saw us, they 
were sharp enough to see how the land lay, and they 
got out of there lively. 

“My friend hooted again, arid in a minute or two 
an owl came and lit on the tree above us and sat 
there looking down with his great round eyes. All 
he saw was those two featherless owls sitting at the 
foot of the tree laughing at him. But he would n’t 
believe he was fooled, and he sat there grumbling at 
us till we went away. 

“The noblest of all the birds that come within 


Slabsides in the Woods 217 

view of my clearing is the eagle. Think of getting up 
in the morning and looking out of your window and 
seeing an eagle perched in plain sight! I’ve done 
that frequently. I see him up on a dead tree at the 
top of the mountain. He looks as big as a turkey, and 
he’s near enough so I can see his white head and 
tail. He sits there a long time preening his plumage. 
I call his perch the ‘eagle tree.’ It is a big hem- 
lock that has been struck by lightning. 

“A great many trees about here have been light- 
ning-struck. One that I was looking at recently was 
a large oak. The tree had been blown to pieces as if 
by an explosion of dynamite. Great slivers like rails 
were scattered all through the woods, some of them 
a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet from the 
tree. 

“We had a very discouraging time with our young 
chicks one spring. A weasel got forty of them and 
we succeeded in raising only eight. Once I saw him 
running a well-grown chicken up and down the road. 
He seemed to think it very mean of the chicken to 
run. I went and got a gun and put an end to Mr. 
Weasel. He had a den near by, and I was sorry after- 
ward that I shot him. I might have had some fun 
watching and studying the family. 

“There was one year that I had a woodchuck 
just over the way at the foot of a cliff, but he did n’t 
seem to like my company, and he dug out. I’d see 
him nibbling the leaves, and sometimes he’d nib- 


218 John Burroughs Talks 

ble my celery. We threatened to dispatch him for 
that, and maybe ’t was our threats frightened him 
away. 

“Coons tear down my sweet corn, and the rabbits 
eat off my raspberry bushes, and chipmunks carry 
away the corn I put out for the chickens. 

“Of course things are comparatively quiet in 
winter; but there are the chickadees, the wood- 
peckers, blue jays, and crows loitering about, and 
sometimes the hounds drive a fox across the clearing 
right in front of the house. 

“ Living in the woods is a real satisfaction to me. 
When I reach Slabsides there is always a sense of 
relief, as if I’d got away from something that 
harassed me. The place attracts me, and I feel very 
much at home, with the great rock that I can see 
from my window reaching round my house like a 
protecting arm. 

“There’s nothing like having a snug nook or corner 
where one can live in retirement. I don’t hear the 
roar of the great political, commercial, and business 
world at all, and that is a real boon. 

“Some have said to me, * Why do you live back here 
when you have a nice place down there by the Hud- 
son? ’ 

“They can’t understand why a man should wish 
to return to the simpler, ruder things of life. As for 
me, if I keep on growing in grace, I expect to come 
to the point when I shall feel that a tent, or a hut 


Slabsides in the Woods 219 

with one room, is all I want. Perhaps that is going 
too far, but it is better than the other extreme, where 
a man can find nothing good enough for him and 
must have a house of a hundred rooms with fifty 
guest-chambers. 

“My excursions to nature have made my sense 
of smell so keen that I get great pleasure from the 
wild open-air perfumes. On the other hand, I abhor 
the odor of tobacco and am eager to escape from 
close rooms and the stench of cities. 

“How much more narcotic and sedative the coun- 
try is than the city! The constant slamming and 
grinding in the city are distressing. Perhaps my 
hearing may be unusually sensitive. If you catch me 
on the little steamer that plies up and down the 
Hudson and stops at the West Park wharf, and the 
whistle blows unawares, I clap my hands to my ears 
quick as lightning. 

“I have no question but that the sounds we hear 
affect our health. For instance, people who live along 
railroads must suffer a constant wear and tear to 
their nervous systems. What a pandemonium let 
loose the railroad is ! 

“I wish some one would start a crusade against 
noise. We shall have it in time. The Peter the Her- 
mit who’s to call us out will appear presently, and 
then the ear will be respected as well as the nose. I 
lived at Riverby between two railroads. There was 
the West Shore over the hill behind me, and the New 


220 John Burroughs Talks 

York Central at the water’s edge just across the 
Hudson. The screeching of the engines on clear 
days was enough to drive you crazy. 

“One train over the river always stopped and sent 
a brakeman on ahead to turn a switch. Then the 
engine blew three toots that were calculated to startle 
the invalids for two miles around. It was a great 
bungling sheaf of sound, full of spears and prickles. 
What was the use of all that sound? They ’d better 
have tied their brakeman with a string — had a rope 
around his neck and pulled him in — anything but 
to blow that whistle. Why should our ears be 
assaulted with hideous noises any more than our 
noses with bad smells? 

“There’s one night steamer on the river that has 
a whistle with a wild, musical strain like the voice of 
a wild goose. When I hear it I wish it would keep on 
blowing for an hour. Why can’t all our whistles 
be musical and sweet? A pure sound will go farther 
than an impure one, any time. 

“If one of the leading railroad magnates would 
only inaugurate the reform, the rest of the world 
would fall into line. It would make his road popular. 
All the railroads try to keep the smoke out of the 
cars, but they continue to make a racket sufficient 
to bring the heavens down on you. The time is 
approaching when we shall have a change, when car 
porters won’t be allowed to slam the doors with 
noise enough to wake the dead, and when we won’t 


Slabsides in the Woods 221 

stand the infernal din of our cobbled streets. But 
that will be when we get more civilized. 

“The Americans are a very patient and long- 
suffering people. We can get points from the English 
in this respect. When I was in London I went to a 
reading that was announced to begin at eight o’clock. 
The hour came and not the reader. At once the audi- 
ence got uneasy, and within two minutes there were 
men on their feet wanting to know why the thing 
did n’t start; and it began without further delay. 
An audience in this country would have sat half 
the evening waiting before it would have made a dis- 
turbance. The American hates to make a row. So 
things are at loose ends. 

“For instance, there’s our telegraph monopoly 
that needs attention. The telegraph people have 
everything all their own way and take their own time 
about delivering messages. I usually find, when I send 
a message, that if I ’d gone afoot and carried it in my 
hand it would have got to its destination quicker. 

“Clatter and confusion are things I feel a good deal. 
My nerves are all on the surface and they are easily 
ruffled and irritated. On the other hand, they are 
easily relieved and quieted, and I only need to go to 
Nature to have my senses put in tune. 

“The most soothing thing that I know of is the 
sea, and next to that is the face of a scarred cliff. 
I know how impressed I have been with the stony 
tops of the Adirondack Mountains. The composure 


222 John Burroughs Talks 

of their rocks is like the face of God Almighty. What 
venerableness, what power, what repose! It is gran- 
deur unspeakable. 

“There’s nothing in any city can touch me that 
way. For me real living is to be among the rocks, 
the hills, and the forests. It is that instinct made 
me build Slabsides. Here I stay and watch my days 
go by. Some of them are bright, some of them are 
dun-colored, and some are blabk. But on the whole 
I have a pretty good time.” 


XIII 

May , 1905 

COMMENTS ON RELIGION 

The train left me at West Park about eight in the 
evening. Burroughs was expecting me, and had a 
messenger on hand to give me a lantern and tell me 
to come up to Slabsides. The night was dark and 
there were occasional misty showers. I went on up 
the muddy, slippery road and into the wet, dripping 
woods. I chose to go by the short-cut. In spots trees 
had been felled by choppers, and the litter of branches 
and trunks made traveling uncertain. Presently I 
came to steep rocks where masses of dead leaves 
filled the spaces between the loose stones and oblit- 
erated the path completely — or at any rate made it 
indistinguishable by lantern light. I stumbled along, 
pushing my way through the brushy lower limbs 
of the trees, and after much experimenting and ad- 
vancing and retreating, while I became more and 
more heated and disconcerted, I finally struck into 
what I recognized as the Slabsides road. Then it 
did not take me long to reach the fertile valley basin 
where Burroughs had his rustic home, and I saw be- 
fore me a cheering light shining from the cabin window. 

When I went to bed, which was soon, for nine 
o’clock was Burroughs’s retiring hour, he sent me 


224 John Burroughs Talks 

to the upstairs chamber with a warning that I was 
not to disturb a nest that a robin had built on my 
window-sill. 

The next morning he went up to have a look at 
the nest, and was a good deal agitated to find no 
eggs in it. Something had robbed it. He was quick 
to show solicitude over the dangers and mishaps of 
all the gentler wild creatures. 

While he was getting breakfast, a migrating Ca- 
nadian sparrow flew with a sharp tap against a win- 
dow-pane, and he went and looked out and gave the 
bird a greeting. 

On our way down through the woods that morning, 
he observed on a drooping hemlock bough a bird’s 
nest that was getting loose, and he carefully propped 
up the bough to make the nest safe. At the village 
he took me under the church horse-shed to see how 
a robin had been confused in its nest-building by the 
alikeness of the spaces where the rafters met the beam 
at the eaves. The bird had started nests all along the 
beam. 

Burroughs picked two long dandelion stems that 
grew near the horse-shed, and as he put the ends of 
them in his mouth to chew on them, he remarked, 
“They’re a good tonic — bitter, you know.” 

One of his backwoods neighbors was a man who 
had reached the age of eighty-eight. We met him in 
the village, and Burroughs introduced him to me 
as a person who believed that the world was flat. 


Comments on Religion 225 

Not only did the old gentlemen believe in the flatness, 
but he was confident he could prove it. When Bur- 
roughs remarked that he thought the world was 
round, the woodland philosopher said, “Well, 
Bucky, that’s where you’re mistaken.” 

We went to Riverby and found Mrs. Burroughs 
house-cleaning. She was giving every room thorough- 
going treatment whether it had been used or not. We 
had no inclination to linger, and soon turned our foot- 
steps toward Slabsides. That noon we feasted on 
potatoes and onions roasted in the ashes, broiled 
steak, and asparagus, and we had a dessert of cold 
pudding and a jar of rhubarb brought from the 
Riverby pantry. 

During this visit Burroughs was notified that he 
had been elected to the American Academy. “But 
I ’m not a scholar and professional literary man,” he 
commented. “I’m not entitled to the membership. 
I’ve looked over the list of Academicians, and some 
of ’em I’ve never heard of before. I think Saint- 
Gaudens, the sculptor, is about the only one 
worthy of the honor. He’s done some wonderful 
work.” 

“I wish you would tell me something of your boy- 
hood religious environment,” I suggested, “and of 
what your impressions on the subject of religion are 
now.” 

His people were “Primitive Baptists,” to use a 
term often found in the literature of the sect, and 


226 John Burroughs Talks 

they faithfully attended services at the “Old Yellow 
Church.” This building still stands, a great barn of 
a structure, on a bare hillock by the roadside two 
miles down the valley from Roxbury village. Ad- 
joining it are some horse-sheds and a cemetery. 
Among the graves can be found those of Burroughs ’s 
parents, and those of Jay Gould’s parents. 

In response to my questions Burroughs said: 

“On Sunday, when we children in the family at 
the old farm were growing up, our father did only 
such work as was necessary, and shaved, and if there 
was a service in the Old School Baptist Church he 
went to it. He would no more be seen in the Metho- 
dist Church than he would be seen in a saloon. 

“Our folks never urged us children to go to church 
and never gave us any religious books to read. The 
Old School Baptists frowned on all sorts of religious 
education. They did n’t believe in Sunday schools. 
They thought religion was too sacred to be handled 
in the way that Sunday schools handle it, or to be 
taught in books. If a man was meant to be saved, 
they believed he would be saved; and if he was 
meant to be damned, he would be damned, whether 
or no. Therefore they must n’t use any influence 
to warp the will of the Lord. They expected the time 
would come when we children would be drawn to the 
church — that the Spirit would move us. 

“It was their idea that a minister shouldn’t write 
his sermons, but get up in the pulpit and say what 



At the Borders of the Slabsides Swamp 









Warm Weather 






Comments on Religion 227 

the Lord put in his mouth. They disbelieved in this 
whole religious machinery business. Writing a ser- 
mon, or even making notes for it, was sacrilege — 
an insult, an outrage. How could a minister know 
what God would have him say until he opened his 
mouth to speak? If he prepared the words before- 
hand, they were his own, not God’s. There was a 
grain of truth in this reasoning, for it placed a pre- 
mium on spontaneity above all deliberation. 

“Yes, the Hardshell preachers trusted to the Lord 
to put the words in their mouths when they got up to 
speak. I thought that was placing a great responsi- 
bility on God for some of the sermons I heard 
preached. They were a curious jumble — all mixed 
up, without head or tail, and with no logical co- 
herence or significance at all. They were as far off 
from our daily lives as the earth is from the moon. 
The preachers were entirely unlettered, but they’d 
study the Bible and charge their minds with Biblical 
phrases. They’d take a text for a sermon at random, 
or perhaps say, ‘This text came into my mind on 
the way to church.’ 

“They preached all around the horizon, rambling 
on and on and hitting whatever they could, but what 
they said had a Biblical sound that comforted the 
old people in their conflict with the world. 

“The preachers did n’t receive a salary and 
wouldn’t take pay except indirectly. If you sent 
them some grain or hay or other supplies, that was 


228 John Burroughs Talks 

all right. They earned their living about the same 
as did their hearers, and it was n’t their custom to 
spend much time in their studies. 

“Usually they were men of vigor and individu- 
ality, and they imparted to their sermons a flavor 
of their own. Occasionally they had a real streak of 
native eloquence. The present-day preachers of the 
sect have n’t the same originality and ruggedness. 
They are like tea thrice steeped so the strength is all 
gone out of it. 

“ Elder Jim Mead used to preach barefooted some- 
times. I suppose he would say, ‘ The apostles did n’t 
wear shoes, and why should I?’ 

“He was poor and uncouth, but with a Spartan 
control of his emotions. One day his son and another 
man went hunting — I remember mother told me 
it was the twenty -third of January — and they lost 
their way in a snowstorm. They were found dead 
afterward. They’d walked round and round in a cir- 
cle after they were nearly home. The elder was preach- 
ing in the schoolhouse when he was informed that his 
son’s body had been found, but he finished his sermon. 

“Another preacher was Elder Hewitt, big of 
stature and a good farmer. In fact, he was so suc- 
cessful in a business way that I guess he must have 
been worth fifty thousand dollars when he died. 

“He was narrow and intolerant, and was much 
addicted to pitching into the Arminians as he called 
the Methodists. Yes, Sunday after Sunday and 


Comments on Religion 229 

year after year he’d be scoring the Arminians. It 
was his view that they upheld a doctrine of whole- 
sale salvation, which he denounced as heretical. He 
was emotional, and sometimes would weep in the 
pulpit. His voice was strident, and at the prayer- 
meetings in the schoolhouse he’d pray just as loud 
as he could yell, when he’d got up all the steam he 
had in him. It would fairly rattle the shingles on the 
roof. Well, the shouters and howlers are no more. 
They did good work and passed. 

“We took a religious paper, the organ of the sect. 
‘Signs of the Times’ was its name. I hardly ever 
looked into it. Doing so was too serious a matter. 
The paper was mainly taken up with experiences 
of sisters and brothers from Maine to Oregon — the 
tales of flounderings through quagmires of doubt 
to the firm ground of faith. Father would read them 
with tears in his eyes. 

“The experiences were all the same thing, very 
lugubrious and painful. They had one general hue. 
First there was the smiting of the conscience — a 
dreadful conviction of sin and unworthiness — and 
the sinner’s feeling that he was going to hell sure sank 
deeper and deeper into his soul. Then he would 
search the Scriptures and find a text that would help 
him, and the next thing he would find another text 
that would dash all his hopes. Then ‘ suddenly these 
words would flash into his mind,’ and after that all 
was cleared up. 


230 John Burroughs Talks 

“Oh, those poor old souls! But, whatever the 
significance of their feeling, it was genuine. They 
meant what they said about it. They were in great 
tribulation and darkness — often in periods that 
extended over weeks and months — before they 
were brought out in the light and were sure they 
were saved. Strange to say, their descendants don’t 
have such experiences. They may join the church, 
but it ’s in a lukewarm fashion — never in the red- 
hot way of the old fellows. Somehow they are not 
worthy of the deep feeling that the elders had. They 
don’t have it. They are a more superficial set. I 
think they are distinctly an inferior race. 

“Now just a handful attend the Old School Bap- 
tist meetings. To accept literally the creed of the 
sect with its emphasis on predestination is a heroic 
act, and the sons of the old members are not men 
enough to follow their father’s example. They are too 
tenderfooted. Religion does n’t mean as much to 
most people as it did two or three generations ago. 
The multiplication of reading is one thing that tends 
to make people more artificial. 

“I often look back and envy my father the satis- 
faction he got in his church. He got companionship. 
He was one of a fold. He did n’t feel the great cosmic 
chill as I feel it. I mean the feeling that comes to one 
when he sees the tremendous processes of nature go 
on entirely independent of him, and knows that he 
is not shut in by any protecting walls, that he has to 


Comments on Religion 231 

take his chances and warm himself as best he can. 
Such feelings the old people did n’t have — at least, 
not after they joined their church. I suppose I get 
from literature something like what father got from 
his church. The church saved him, and this other 
will save me. 

“Probably the fear of hell is about evaporated in 
these days. I never had a really vivid realization of 
anything of the sort myself; and I never had the 
least belief in the devil. As soon as I got old enough 
to think about the matter, I could n’t imagine it 
possible that the Supreme Being was in partnership 
with such a creature. For if the devil existed, he 
was created by God, who was therefore in part- 
nership with him. That God could n’t control him 
absolutely and abolish him if he existed seemed 
an idea which was childish — puerile. Surely, a su- 
preme being could n’t be thwarted in his ends and 
aims. 

“I never speculated about the Trinity. I always 
looked on that as a puzzle men made for them- 
selves, and then worked out the solution as best they 
could. 

“I did n’t believe in evil the way people commonly 
believe in it. I did n’t think there was a dualism in 
nature — two things struggling against each other. 
Evil is one phase of good. How could there be any 
progress if there was n’t something to overcome? 
You can’t paint a picture all white. You have to 


232 John Burroughs Talks 

have shades. But the truth about evil is the for- 
bidden fruit. We are not to know it lest our efforts 
to overcome evil be relaxed. 

“I came near joining the Methodist Church once. 
That was at Tongore, where I was teaching school. 
I had got into the habit of going to the Sunday 
services, largely perhaps because of the charm of 
certain maidens who were sure to be present. I 
know I did n’t go for any pleasure I got out of the 
dominie’s long-winded sermons. Those made me 
restive. 

‘‘Presently there was a revival, and I attended 
all the meetings. One night I went forward to the 
anxious seat. So much had been said about what 
was to be gained by doing this that I expected it 
would result in some miraculous change in me. I 
simply believed what the preacher had been asserting. 
I thought if I went to the anxious seat and knelt in 
a serious state of mind, I’d get converted, made over, 
or something, without any further trouble. 

“Pretty soon some of the leaders in the revival 
asked me how I felt. 

“Well, J did n’t see that I was any different from 
the commonplace person I always had been, and I 
told them I felt about the same as I did before. 

“They did n’t like that. If I’d been less honest, 
or if I’d been weak-kneed, I suppose I’d have been 
a convert. As it was I decided to work out my salva- 
tion some other way. The next night the preacher 


Comments on Religion 233 

prayed for the teacher who was ‘taking his whole 
flock down to hell with him.’ 

“That was putting it on a little too strong. It riled 
me, and I thought we’d go to hell if that was where 
we were bound for. 

“I don’t believe in these emotional conversions 
under strong excitement. It’s just exactly as a man 
does a thing when he’s drunk, and the converted 
person’s psychic condition is worse than it was be- 
fore. The effect of conversion on the younger people 
in the revivals I remember was comparatively mild. 
But some of the older people, converted under that 
furnace heat, were convinced there had been a fun- 
damental change. They became thorough-going re- 
ligious people both inwardly and formally. Yet all 
along they had been sound at heart. I never knew an 
essentially bad man to be made over by conversion. 
I never knew a man who was mean and sneaking and 
lying or sensual previous to conversion who was n’t 
so afterward. The change is merely outward, not 
radical. People in their excitement think something 
strange happens to them, but no doubt it’s entirely 
psychological. 

“I have never accepted the creed of any church 
myself. My reverence is for righteousness, not 
dogma. I have ‘given my heart to Nature instead 
of to God,’ as the old people would say, but that has 
never cast a shadow over my mind or conscience. 
I believe God is Nature. I also believe there is some 


234 John Burroughs Talks 

sort of omnipotent intelligence underlying the mani- 
festations of power and the orderliness that we see 
in the universe. 

“Personal immortality, for which so many have 
a keen desire, has never seemed to me probable, 
though I can’t say that it is impossible. 

“In spite of my beliefs, or the lack of them, the 
dominies rather take to me. Yes, I’ve always got 
along pretty well with them, but theologically I 
regard most of them as rather stupid, infantile, or 
superstitious. Their sermons are commonplace, and 
abound in logic that is artificial and mistaken, or 
shallow. I can’t listen to them with any comfort. 

“ I help support the church near my home, but I 
rarely go to it. I feel a little conscience-smitten at 
times over this delinquency, because I think church- 
going is better than staying away for most persons, 
and my example is not a good one. If I lived in a city 
I think I could pick out a preacher I’d enjoy hearing. 
There’s Dr. Crothers, of Cambridge, for instance, a 
man of great ability and originality. I can listen to 
him with genuine satisfaction. 

“I don’t feel as if there is anything we can be very 
dogmatic about. If you observe closely, you find you 
know so little, and you find such contradictions. 
Storms in the southern hemisphere whirl in the direc- 
tion taken by the hands of a watch. In the northern 
hemisphere they whirl in the opposite direction. 
Well, I notice the little whirlwinds we have, and they 


Comments on Religion 235 

whirl just as the storms do. Then I notice the bean 
and the bittersweet and numbers of other vines, and 
find that they climb in a spiral which also corre- 
sponds to the storm motion; and I think I’ve discov- 
ered a general law. But presently I find that the 
hop goes the other way, and so does the wild buck- 
wheat; and you can’t make them do any different. 

“A person is not religious just because he has a 
definite scheme of theology. He may have that and 
be entirely lacking in aesthetic and moral sensitive- 
ness. The lover of nature and of the good and beauti- 
ful is the truly religious man, and you find such in 
every church and outside of any church. I have no 
patience with those people who know all about God 
and his plans — who, as Matthew Arnold says, 
‘speak of God as if he lived around the corner, where 
they interviewed him daily.’ 

“It does n’t make you religious simply to have a 
definite notion about heaven and hell. I think Re- 
nan’s was a truly religious nature. Smite him on one 
cheek and he would turn to you the other. Take 
away his coat and he would give you his waistcoat. 
He would n’t return evil for evil. That ’s the true 
test of a Christian. If you can’t return good for evil, 
it’s a mockery to call yourself a Christian. To give 
a soft answer when we have received a wrathful one 
is the most difficult thing in the world. 

“The preacher says: ‘Trust in Christ. Follow 
him. Come to the baptismal fountain.’ It’s the 


236 John Burroughs Talks 

Christ within us that we should trust. It ’s the voice 
of conscience that we should follow. It ’s the love of 
truth and the doing to others as we would be done 
by that we should aspire to. That is Christ. Reli- 
gion is a life — not something apart from the person 
who has it. Christ exemplified that. It was Paul and 
not Christ who led the way in formulating a Christian 
creed and theology. 

“I’ve taken a good deal of curious interest in 
Christian Science. It’s amazing how blamed op- 
timistic and cheerful the Christian Scientists are 
made by their religion. The effect is good on their 
health, and they certainly are happier for their 
belief. I know one of them — a woman, and the 
wife of a physician — and she’s just like a ray of 
sunshine. Of course her religion does n’t go down 
very well with her husband. It’s so childish — so 
silly. I ’m ashamed of it when its adherents attempt 
to explain it. I pity their intellects. As soon as they 
begin to argue about it, they’re lost. Mrs. Eddy 
is not fish, flesh, nor fowl, and it’s strange that she 
should be so widely accepted as an inspired religious 
leader. Anybody that thinks at all can’t help but 
see the folly of Christian Science. Really, though, 
the other religions are not free from folly either. 
They ’re all preposterous. 

“It’s not the truth of your religion that saves, 
but the truth of your belief in it. I don’t care if it is 
that the moon is made of green cheese. The one 


Comments on Religion 237 

thing needful on your part is sincerity — otherwise 
there’s no anchorage. 

“Christian Scientists find pleasure in giving rein 
to their emotions, and there are certain diseases, 
which, if they imagine they have n’t got, are cured. 
They only need to believe in their heart of hearts 
that they have n’t the disease in order to get well. 
The last time I saw that cheerful doctor’s wife she 
had a cough. She spoke of it, and said, ‘I’ve been 
so busy I have n’t had time to get at it/ She was 
confident she could cure it by believing it away, but 
I don’t know whether it is that sort or not. 

“She has a sister, a very capable and well-educated 
woman to whom Christian Science is nonsense, but 
who is inclined to be peppery and impatient. I’ve 
said to this peppery one: T wish you had some of 
your sister’s temperament. If you could be a sincere 
Christian Scientist it would improve you.’ 

“It’s curious what beliefs — even disgusting be- 
liefs — are associated with beautiful lives. I ’ve 
been reading Miss Merriam’s ‘My Summer in a 
Mormon Village.’ All the glimpses you get of the 
Mormon women in this book appeal to you. The 
men seem more selfish — like hogs. I said all through 
the book, as I read, ‘How sweet and good and human 
this book is!’ 

“One of the characters the author calls ‘a mother 
in Israel,’ and rightly too. This mother in Israel 
really believed in the revelations of Joseph Smith, 


238 John Burroughs Talks 

and a most religious woman she was — life counts 
for so much more than the creed ! 

“Look back on the history of humanity and think 
how we’ve blundered along, sometimes knee-deep 
in blood! The babe that might be the savior of his 
race has the smallpox or whooping-cough, and dies 
just as quickly as the most worthless. In nature the 
struggle for place and life is unending. A maple tree 
will drop a hundred thousand seeds to one that will 
ever grow into a tree. Accident and destruction and 
death are nothing to Nature. She has infinite time 
to perfect her ends. What Nature’s ends are, or 
God’s ends, I often have but a faint idea. Most of 
our preachers seem much too sure and much too 
ready with their explanations of these things. Some 
eminent Englishman once said he wished he was as 
sure of anything as Lord Macaulay was of everything. 
I feel the same way about the preachers. 

“But, however much I differ with them, I think we 
can agree that it is always fitting to preach the gospel 
of beauty in the commonplace. Look about your own 
vicinity and find heaven. The grand and beautiful 
are there if you have eyes for them. We must n’t 
expect the extraordinary — a miracle. We should 
look at what lies around us at our feet. We gaze at 
the stars — we forget that we are on a star.” 


XIV 

May , 1907 

THE CHARM OF NATURE 

On this visit, when Burroughs and I walked from 
the station up to Slabsides, we did n’t go by the 
steep short-cut, but around by the gentler ascent of 
the road, and he stopped several times to rest. “I’ve 
had a hard winter,” he explained. “ I sprained my 
hip, broke a bone in my hand, and have had grip 
and pneumonia. It has left me very weak.” 

A carefully mended tear in his trousers seemed to 
attest that Mrs. Burroughs looked well after his 
apparel. 

When we were at our ease in the woodland cabin 
and personal items of news had been exchanged, we 
talked of what Nature meant to him and he said: 

“I’m interested in all the wild creatures, and I’m 
interested in flowers, though I’ve written compara- 
tively little about them. Yet I like the flowers as 
much as anybody. There is the first hepatica — one 
can stand and look at it as at the face of a dear friend. 
It has come up out of the dead ground, and has 
opened its beautiful tender blue eye. How can I 
help lingering around? Nor do I ever see the first 
daisy in summer without emotion. 

“But nothing appeals to me quite so much out of 


240 John Burroughs Talks 

doors as the birds. There’s something more human 
about them than about the flowers. They ’re winged 
persons. None of the other creatures has the same 
mystery that these winged things have. But I care 
for them only as a part of the environment that is 
normal to them. I don’t care for them in a museum. 
It is the live bird I want. 

“I suppose, strictly speaking, I am not a natu- 
ralist. In fact, I prefer to call myself a nature-lover. 
I’ve never dissected an animal in my life, except 
on my plate with a knife and fork, but in the young 
women’s colleges they make a feature of learning 
about nature by dissecting cats. That sort of study 
seems to me very poor stuff. 

“I want to get at nature first-hand. Birds in the 
house don’t attract me. The caged bird lacks the 
proper surroundings, but the bird in its native haunts 
always sets my emotions vibrating. How interesting 
the nesting of birds is! I can sit and watch their 
building operations for hours, they are so absorbed 
in the task and they have such curious ways. Some 
of these ways are quite human. For instance, the 
female does all the work, just as the women do among 
savages. The drudgery falls to her, while the male is 
a gentleman, a lord. He comes to look on and en- 
courage her; but she seems to be irritated by his 
presence, and may even scold and drive him away. 

“The birds are enjoyable in all their character- 
istics — in their battles, their songs, their flight. 



Talking with “ Amasy ” at the Study Door 





The Grandchildren in the Playhouse 



The Charm of Nature 241 

their color. As for color, though, they are generally 
rather sober. The one bit of genuinely brilliant color 
in the bird world of our climate is the tanager. You 
see a tanager sitting on a little hemlock, and the color 
against such a background holds and delights the eye 
wonderfully. 

“The flight of the birds always attracts me. How 
peculiarly expressive a lark’s flight is, seen against 
the sky! The flapping and sailing of the hawks are 
unlike the movements of any other birds. I could 
recognize many of the birds by their flight, if I saw 
nothing else. 

“Last May I went up to my old home in the Cats- 
kills, and I went at that particular season because 
I wanted to hear the bobolinks in the meadows where 
I knew them as a boy. There’s no place equal to the 
Catskills for bobolinks. They have a more pleasing 
song there than in other parts of the country. The 
song has a tinkling in it as we hear it along the 
Hudson. It has n’t the resonance and copiousness 
of the songs on the high meadows of those hill farms. 
I don’t know why — perhaps because the air is dif- 
ferent. 

“All English birds have a quality of harshness in 
their songs, and, at the same time, of strength. The 
English skylark has n’t the melody of our bobolink, 
nor his rollicking, devil-may-care sort of manner. Yet 
the song of the skylark is an expression of buoyancy, 
of hardy, virile country strength — the utterance of 


242 John Burroughs Talks 

a rapt poet. The bobolink is n’t as serious. He acts 
a bit tipsy. 

‘‘There was a curious piece in the New York ‘Eve- 
ning Post’ the other day about bobolinks. The 
writer said that to hear them at their best you wanted 
to sit on the haycocks in the fields on a summer 
evening. But by haying-time the bobolink has lost 
his earlier song of rivalry and happiness. He sings 
only in snatches, and he scolds. The article went on 
to tell how the old birds sang, and then added, ‘and 
the young birds join in the chorus.’ Well, that’s 
rather ridiculous, for the young birds have a pip, and 
no song at all. 

“We have a true skylark on the Catskill hills. His 
manner is exactly the same as that of the English 
skylark. He climbs up and up in a hovering ecstasy 
of flight till he soars three or four hundred feet in the 
air. But he has the rudest and most rudimentary song. 
He seems like a bird whose voice is almost shut off 
by a bad cold. Perhaps he’s just begun to sing. No 
doubt he will improve, for the law of evolution op- 
erates among birds the same as it does in everything 
else. Bird-songs change. So does our speech. Sup- 
posing we had no written language; two hundred 
years from now a person who knew only our present 
language would n’t be able to understand us. 

“I’ve heard a robin with the song of a brown 
thrasher. The imitation was so perfect I could n’t 
believe it was a robin till I saw the bird. I know a 


The Charm of Nature 243 

certain valley in the Catskills where the bobolinks 
have a song all their own. The bobolinks in that 
valley have added to their song a peculiar bell-like 
note. It seems to be the fad there. 

“ A bobolink does n’t sing close by his nest, but 
always within earshot of it. In his song he is 
merely expressing the joy of home-making, his love 
for mate and little ones, his delight in nature. Ah! 
the bobolink is a wonderful songster. 

“What interesting birds the crows are! They have 
roosts in the woods for at least a part of the year — 
that is, they come together in great flocks and spend 
the night in some particular place. I have heard 
of other birds having their tribal roosts, but they 
have n’t come under my observation. 

“The birds mostly roost where their nests are. 
The orioles roost way out on the ends of pendant 
branches. I’ve seen them there. Ground birds will 
roost on the ground. I sometimes start them up when 
I’m walking at night. 

“lA number of species of birds gather in flocks 
when they are preparing to migrate. I’ve seen ten 
thousand swallows moving southward in one day 
on the Jersey coast. They were scattered all through 
the air in a great loose flock. But there are only a 
few kinds of birds that make the journey in that 
way, either going or coming. They travel singly 
or in family groups. They migrate at night, and 
we don’t see much of them on the passage. I’ve 


244 John Burroughs Talks 

heard the warblers calling at night as they pass over- 
head. 

<c The birds don’t start from Canada and make 
a business of getting to Florida as fast as they can. 
They loiter along with the season. There are king- 
lets and other birds on the top of the highest Cats- 
kills in early autumn that you won’t see down at 
Riverby for another month. They wait for the 
weather to sharpen. In their spring and autumn 
migrations they may hasten or retard their journey 
if the weather is unseasonable. But though they 
may loiter or stop, I doubt if they would turn back 
on their course, except possibly in case of a snow- 
storm on their way north. Then they might return 
far enough to get to bare ground. They would n’t 
be driven just by rain or cold. 

“The birds have to rest, and they have to feed. 
They can’t see to feed at night, and if they flew by 
day they’d be apt to be disturbed. The water-birds 
in their migrating may often go hundreds of miles at 
a stretch. You usually see them in the early morning 
or in the evening. If you see a flight at midday, it is 
because they have been scared away from the water 
where they had stopped to feed. Sometimes I will 
hear the honk , honk , of the wild geese passing high 
in the air at midnight. That ’s the clarion call of 
the gander. It is a delightful sound which I love to 
hear, there is something so very wild about it. 

“I like to see ducks, even tame ones. I have a 


The Charm of Nature 245 

flock of my own that I enjoy watching. They feel the 
wild blood in their bodies still, as is evident by the 
way they flap their wings. Sometimes they flap so 
hard they lift themselves off the ground. 

“What persistent, prolific creatures the English 
sparrows are! You can destroy their nests, you can 
poison them and wage war on them in any way you 
please, and yet they continue to thrive. They were 
brought here originally to fatten on the insects which 
preyed on our city shade-trees, but their taste was 
for food of another sort, and they’ve spread till no 
part of our domain is free from them. 

“I remember that I first saw them about 1866 in 
Jersey City. They were scratching around in the 
streets, and I said to myself, ‘What in thunder are 
those birds?’ Soon they were in Washington, where 
I was then living, and one day I noticed a boy shoot- 
ing them with a sling. I wanted to call the police. 
‘They’ll be exterminated,’ I thought, ‘and that’ll 
be too bad.’ 

“But I did n’t know them. A few years ago a 
friend of mine shot sixty sparrows one after the other 
from a single nest, and the survivor of the pair always 
found a new mate. As the shooting continued, the 
birds got cautious. They would skedaddle as soon 
as they saw the gunner, and they finally raised the 
brood in the nest. 

“The sparrows don’t seem as threatening a 
nuisance as they did at first. They are essentially a 


246 John Burroughs Talks 

town bird. The country does n’t furnish sufficient 
food in winter and is too cold. They are seed-eaters, 
and the droppings of grain-fed town horses have 
been their chief dependence. With the introduction 
of electric cars and automobiles this source of food 
has been diminished and has tended to cut off the 
sparrows. Besides, the hawks have come to under- 
stand them and now often hover around the cities 
to pick them up. 

“I’m a little apprehensive about the starlings that 
have been introduced in America from abroad in 
recent years. They ’ve got to live, and they are hus- 
tlers. I don’t know of their doing any harm, but 
that sharp beak of theirs makes me suspicious that 
they damage the fruit. I saw a flock last night — a 
dozen or so. It made a new impression against the 
sky — wings, beak, or something. It ’s ticklish 
business introducing new forms like that into the 
country. They don’t run riot in their native land. 
There they’ve found their place, and some check 
prevents an abnormal increase. 

“A natural check develops for every pest we have. 
At one time our elm-tree foliage was pretty badly 
riddled by beetles that arrived on our shores from 
their native Europe. We were ready to say, ‘Good- 
bye, elms,’ but presently some enemy or distemper 
appeared, and the beetles are no longer a menace. 

“Up in Delaware County, several years ago, the 
forest-worm played havoc with the maple trees. 


The Charm of Nature 247 

When a maple tree has been denuded three succes- 
sive years, it gives up and dies. Well, the worms ate 
off the leaves two years, but the third year the ich- 
neumon-flies got busy and put an egg in each forest- 
worm chrysalis — millions of them. When an egg 
hatched, the grub ate up its host. I looked around 
in the woods and found out what had happened, and 
I told the farmers they would n’t have any more 
forest-worms. Yes, Nature keeps a certain equi- 
librium. 

“The birds appeal to me most in their relation 
to the seasons and to my own past. People change, 
and places change, but the birds are seemingly the 
identical ones I have always known, endowed with 
eternal youth. When one of these friends of my 
boyhood reappears in the spring, I say, ‘Hello, old 
fellow! So you’re not dead yet!’ and I feel myself 
transported instantly back to my father’s farm in 
the Catskills. 

“The notes of the first returning robin or song 
sparrow that I hear are like opening a door right 
into spring, and nothing else opens the door of the 
season so effectively. The most welcome sound that 
comes to my ears during the whole year is the call of 
the robin at sunset — its ‘Ha-ha!’ which I think of 
as its laughter. How that kindles and wakens one 
up! With me it brings to mind associations con- 
nected with the sugar-grove where I heard the same 
call as a boy. 


248 John Burroughs Talks 

“Nearly everything in nature refers one back, 
stirs some emotion connected with the past; and 
that past always has a halo, a glory which did n’t 
appear at the time. For the moment you are young 
again, and the experience is very delightful, even 
though it is pathetic. One of the sounds I heard in 
my youth was the bleating of the sheep in the twi- 
light on the hills, and I like to hear it now. Oh, it is 
inexpressibly sweet and rural! The earliest bumble- 
bee also awakens a youthful memory, when I hear 
the mellow bass of its wings on the first warm days 
of April. It is the female going zigzag here and there, 
searching for a place to make her nest. In the same 
way it is a joy to see our first butterfly, ‘the mourning 
cloak,’ dancing through the open. 

“All the year similar sights and sounds accent 
the changes. There is the note of the first harvest- 
fly — the cicada. That begins a new chapter. It 
means the ripening season, and that the long, tran- 
quil, languid days of midsummer have gone. 

“I’m specially interested at that season in the 
big winged grasshoppers. You know the shuffling 
sound they make, and how they hover in the air like 
a hawk. I pause to look at them now just as I used 
to when I was a boy. In those days I would some- 
times catch one by giving it a knock with my hat 
and then grabbing it. There was quite a triumph in 
effecting a capture, because the grasshopper had 
wings and was so much like a bird. Now and then 


249 


The Charm of Nature 

I would secure a lot of them by going in the early 
morning to a place I knew where they roosted on a 
slaty rock. This rock was warmed by the sun during 
the day, and they sought it for its heat, which was 
long retained. But by morning the heat was gone, 
and then they were a little stiff with the cold and 
easily captured. 

“Another token of the ripening season is the in- 
sects one hears in the air on an August day — a soft 
melodious hum from an invisible source. It is honey 
bees and flies and similar creatures going to and fro. 
They have bred numerously, and the sound of their 
wings forms a background above you as extensive 
as the sky itself. You can hear it anywhere in the 
fields or on a hill, and it is very sweet to me; for I 
heard it in my youth, and it takes me back to what, 
in my own feeling, seems a sort of lost paradise. 

“I like to watch any work I used to do on the old 
farm. There was the planting of corn the last of May. 
We planted only on days that were warm and nice; 
and what a pleasure it was as I look back! — though 
I suppose I was all the time longing to be off rambling 
in the woods or fishing by the streams. Haying was 
a great event in my youth. When the time arrived 
it meant the beginning of a strenuous season. How 
we had to fight for a month! The work was hard, 
but how fragrant the grass and the big loads of hay ! 
Then there were the summer showers that used to 
come and give us a rest. 


250 John Burroughs Talks 

“I am very much attracted by springs. I never 
can go by one without stopping and drinking; and 
it is a kind of religion with me to clean out any spring 
that is befouled. You see, a spring is a vital place. 
Something begins there, and all forms of life cluster 
round and love it. I rejoice when I find a spring in 
the woods. If I go back to my old home, I visit 
the springs I used to know — and there were a great 
many on our farm — all cold and sweet. I have 
associations with every one of them, and I clean 
them out, sit by them, and read a book, and drink 
and drink and drink again. 

“Trout brooks appeal to me through my liking 
for fishing and the pleasure I used to take swimming 
in their pools. I spent many boyhood hours wander- 
ing along their banks. 

“One thing which stirs my emotion, but which 
has no associations with my boyhood, is the ocean. 
The first time I saw it was at Coney Island with 
Walt Whitman. It possesses for me a great fascina- 
tion — even more than the mountains have, because 
I have those with me so much of the time. I find it 
a tonic, and it stirs my imagination — the immensity 
of it, always active and unchanging; that primordial 
water forever pounding on the sand. 

“There is always a profound appeal to me in the 
country home, or a winding rural roadway. The 
domestic look around an old farm is a satisfaction. 
That is why England gives me more pleasure than 


The Charm of Nature 251 

any other country. It is a land of homes which date 
back to a remote past and are very suggestive of 
household delights and joys. New England also has 
its old homesteads, which nestle in their surround- 
ings, mellow, picturesque, and comfortable. They 
are charming because man has left his mark on 
nature without scarring it or making it artificial — 
and the human in nature, when harmonious with it, 
is good to witness. 

“One thing that repels me in our West is the 
newness and rawness of the dwellings and environ- 
ment, but time may furnish a remedy. The passing 
years give to the trees and grass some quality that 
can’t be had immediately. The very look of the 
earth is different by reason of man’s long contact 
with it. 

“I learned a great many things about nature in 
my boyhood which I did n’t know I learned — 
gathered a great many valuable facts and impres- 
sions. I never studied the birds. I simply loved 
them. Nature opened her heart to me because I 
opened my heart to her. I don’t have much sym- 
pathy with those who go out to the fields deliber- 
ately to study nature. They make a dead set at it 
for a little while, and then return to their money- 
making, or to society and the fashions. Yet I sup- 
pose they absorb some good, and I’m glad to have 
them take their way of obtaining it rather than 
miss it altogether. There is virtue just in getting the 


252 John Burroughs Talks 

sun tan on their faces, and the earth tan on their 
shoes. 

“A town girl I once met, who was attending a 
young women’s school, said she did n’t care a straw 
for nature — in fact, rather hated it. She was a very 
attractive girl, the brightest student in the school 
and she wanted my advice about this lack of hers. 
I told her she had better stick to the things she did 
love, and that a liking for nature might come later. 
‘Go out into the country,’ I said, ‘and walk, row, 
and ride. Don’t think about nature, but go to have 
a good time. Go with your sweetheart, if need be, 
and let nature’s influence steal in on you. Don’t try 
to daub on a love of nature, but weave nature in 
with your life, and the liking can’t help growing.’ 

“Another thing I would say to those who go forth 
to observe the out-of-door world is to seek truth and 
not attempt to fancy that the animals have the 
thought-capacity of human beings. I have always 
looked for any gleam of intelligence I could find 
in the wild life, and made as much of it as I could. 
But the new school of nature-writers gave me such 
a shock with their romancing that I went the other 
way pretty fast, though I don’t think I have gone 
too far. I said: ‘Those fellows ought to be over- 
hauled. I guess I’ll have to roast them a little.’ 

“It sort of woke me up. I should n’t have minded 
if they had told what they told as stories. We have 
had our fairy-tale animals and our yEsop’s Fables for 


253 


The Charm of Nature 

centuries, but the present-day creators of fictitious 
animals all hang themselves in a preface. Their 
characters are human beings in animal clothing, and 
reason and act just as we would; yet the authors say 
in their preface, ‘These things are true.’ I could n’t 
stand that, and thought it was time an example was 
made of some of them. It was n’t right that people 
should believe such yarns. 

“The rumpus began in 1903. People had often 
asked me if I’d read a certain nature- writer, con- 
cerning whose work I’d seen favorable comments in 
the papers. ‘I must get hold of his books,’ I said. 

“The next thing I knew, a teacher who’d been 
telling me how good they were sent me one of them. 
‘Now I’ll have a treat,’ I remarked, and sat down to 
devour it. 

“ But I had n’t read five minutes when I became 
indignant and threw the book down. ‘The man is 
a liar!’ I said. 

“I got his other books, but they were all the same. 
The more I read the hotter I got. He was deceiving 
the public, and I felt that I ought to show him up. 
So I wrote an article, and because the man was a 
minister I said some pretty sharp things about the 
clergy, but I cut those out later. The article was 
published in the ‘Atlantic ’ and made a great uproar. 
It’s hard for me to be unkind to any man or beast, 
but the case was such a flagrant one of humbugging 
the public that I had to speak out. I’ve never re- 


254 John Burroughs Talks 

pented writing the article, but it was n’t wise for me 
to let my anger show in print. 

“President Roosevelt jumped into the fray and 
backed me up; and he spoke with authority, for he 
was not only an enthusiastic hunter, but one of the 
most accurate observers I’ve ever known. 

“The result of it all was that the Nature-Fakers 
drew in their horns. I hope they will keep them 
drawn in. Even the man who particularly aroused 
my wrath grew more modest, and he has since done 
some work that I consider excellent. 

“I grant that it is difficult to write and not overdo, 
if you attempt a story. Unless you overdo you feel 
that you will fail to get to the mark. It is seductive. 
I might not keep within bounds myself if I were to 
write stories. But reality is to me so much better than 
fiction, that I want imagination to illumine facts, 
not to make them over. My love of the real was 
strong at the beginning, I guess, and it has grown 
because of what I have fed on. In my books I have 
aimed to portray things just as I have felt them, and 
if the books have any special merit, it is that they 
make the reader participate in my own feelings.” 

Probably the effect of Burroughs on the nature- 
writers who mixed fact and fiction indistinguishably 
in their text was salutary, but I doubt if he con- 
vinced the public to as marked a degree as he thought. 
People who have pets or who have even a slight 


The Charm of Nature 255 

first-hand knowledge of animals are still very apt to 
have an ingrained feeling that the animals use their 
wits much as mankind does — at least in a rudi- 
mentary way. 

This is illustrated by the comments of one of 
Burroughs’s old-time neighbors in the Catskills made 
to me on the subject. He said: “John wrote a lot 
about animals, and he claimed that man was the 
only animal endowed with brains and reasoning- 
power. I remember reading that into one of his 
books. He ought to have knowed more than to say 
such things. A good deal that he wrote wa’n’t very 
accurate. He wrote what came in his head, I think. 

“Of course animals reason. A cow is an easy-going 
sort of a darn thing, but, by gol! cows can learn a 
lot; and I’ve seen dogs that knew more than lots of 
humans I’ve met. I used to have one. Sometimes 
strangers stopped at our house for the night and 
would leave their teams and things in our barn. The 
next morning the dog would let ’em take their own 
things, but he’d make a row if they touched any- 
thing of ours. 

“A cat is about as dumb an animal as there is, but 
not so dumb it can’t reason. Horses can reason 
too. We had one that would drive cattle. When we 
were taking a bunch of cattle somewhere, we could 
get out of the wagon and never pay no attention to 
the horse at all. The horse would keep along in the 
road behind the herd. If a cow went through a gap. 


256 John Burroughs Talks 

he’d stop and wait for things to get straightened 
out before he started.” 

Burroughs’s quality as a nature-writer has often 
been a topic of discussion among his readers, and 
their strictures have sometimes been rather severe; 
but I think it can fairly be said that the technical 
experts in his realm credit him with remarkable 
keenness of observation and with a number of in- 
teresting discoveries, and though it may be granted 
that he was primarily a poet in recording what he 
saw and felt, his statements seldom fail to be scien- 
tifically sound. 


XV 

July , 1909 
CORRESPONDENCE 

I journeyed back into the Catskills one showery 
morning and reached Roxbury toward noon. Chaun- 
cey, one of the sons of Burroughs’s brother Curtis, 
met me at the station in a two-horse express wagon 
loaded with bags of feed. 

When we got to the old home we found Burroughs 
and the farm family in the kitchen. The chief 
features of the room were a long dining-table and a 
stove, a sofa in one corner, and coats and hats hung 
on nails around the walls. Curtis was sitting in his 
rocking-chair next to the big woodbox, where he 
could look out of the window. That had been his 
nook for years, and just in front of the chair his feet 
had worn a deep hollow in the floor. The entire floor 
was much worn, and the knots stood up prominently. 

Now that every one was there, dinner was served. 
The sun came doubtfully through the clouds in the 
early afternoon, and Burroughs and I set forth for 
a walk. We climbed a pasture slope to a big glacial 
boulder that had been a favorite resort of his boy- 
hood. He seated himself on it and looked off over the 
familiar landscape of great half -wooded rounded hills, 
and he examined crevices and holes in the rock that 


258 John Burroughs Talks 

he recalled to have been just the same more than 
half a century before. 

The next day was Sunday. Burroughs wrote in 
his room upstairs much of the morning, as usual. 
After dinner we started together for a stroll, but 
presently parted company. I went to explore the 
Hardscrabble District, and he rambled in the fields 
hunting for birds’ nests, eating bilberries, and nap- 
ping, as he told me afterward. 

I returned first and joined several of the farm folk 
who were in the sitting-room. We got to talking 
about Burroughs, and Curtis remarked, “Here’s 
John has traveled all over the world, ’most, while 
I’ve hardly been out of sight of the Catskills.” 

This he said, not regretfully, but as a matter of 
curious interest. 

“Yes, he’s traveled a good deal,” Curtis’s wife 
agreed, “and yet he’s always coming back here to 
his old home just the same. Our winter don’t suit 
him very well, and he stays away then, but he’s 
pretty sure to be on hand for a few days in sap- 
time. He don’t help much with the sugar-making 
except to sometimes set in the sap-house awhile and 
keep the fire going and the sap b’iling. 

“A year or two ago he thought he’d like to have 
a little b’iling place to himself, the same as when he 
was a boy. We gave him what pans and kittles we 
had, and got some more at the neighbors’. He flew 
around here that afternoon and was just about crazy 



In the Doorway of the old Hay-Barn Study 



The Old Farm Home in the Catskills 



His Boyhood Rock 




Correspondence 259 

to get his sap things ready. By and by he carried 
’em up to the sap-bush, but a while afterward he come 
limping home. He’d had a fall. He said he wanted 
a stick to prop up a pan, and he saw on the lower side 
of a big maple a dead stub that he thought would do. 
He could n’t pull it over. So he clim’ up it and put 
his feet over against the big maple and pushed, and 
down he went. It was quite stony where he fell, and 
he was lame for three or four days. 

“ He talked about it a good deal and said he ’d ’a’ 
thought he’d knowed better — the idee! — if he’d 
been a boy it would n’t look so foolish, but for a 
grown man there was no excuse. That ended his sap 
business, and he did n’t even go up to get his things. 
Some of us had to bring ’em down.” 

“Uncle John likes to be here in haying-time too,” 
Chauncey observed. “I don’t know why, unless he 
enjoys seeing us fellers work. He never offers to do 
anything himself.” 

“Last summer,” Curtis’s wife said, “he hired an 
old house we own over the hill and brought some 
friends there to stay a few weeks. I worked about 
to death to get it ready for ’em, putting in furniture 
and cleaning up. They ’d take walks and they ’d lay 
around under the trees.” 

“ Sometimes Uncle John would go fishing,” Chaun- 
cey added, “and he’d ketch fish too. By gol! he got 
some good ones. Another thing he did was to pick 
up all the sticks he could find near the old house and 


260 John Burroughs Talks 

cut ’em into firewood. There was a stove set up out- 
doors, and he’d cook the breakfast on it. He wa’n’t 
very particular how he looked, and he’d get all 
smoke and pot-black so you might take him for Rip 
Van Winkle. But he said the weeks he spent at the 
old house did him worlds of good, and that he always 
felt better up here in summer, the air and water are 
so much purer than down by the Hudson.” 

“John delights in dirt,” Curtis’s wife affirmed, 
“and he likes to see things layin’ around a little. 
His wife is just the opposite. It ’s a wonder that two 
such different people ever married. She goes further 
than is necessary in trying to keep things so terribly 
clean. You’re afraid to take any comfort, you got 
to be so careful about dirt and disorder. You look 
at her face — it’s got a peculiar kind of a pucker. 
She’s worrying about her housework all the time, 
and she’ll make it hot for any of the family that 
don’t do as she thinks they’d ought to. It’s a dis- 
ease, and when a woman has got a face like that you 
c’n know she ’s got the disease good and stout. 

“About a year ago a girl I know went to work at 
Riverby. Aunt Ursula made her do everything in 
the way she was used to doing things herself, and 
finally, when she told her how to hold the dish- 
cloth, the girl would n’t stand it and went back 
home. 

“Then John and his wife got a woman relative 
to come in and help her and be a companion for her. 


Correspondence 261 

Aunt Ursula did the bossing while she and this rela- 
tive cleaned the house so clean they could n’t get it 
any cleaner, and after that they went out and be- 
gan to scrub the barn. So the relative left.” 

“Some of us were down there in May,” Chauncey 
said, “and Aunt Ursula had had fourteen different 
hired girls inside of two months. She’d have a new 
one every day if she could get one. They won’t 
stay. She hires ’em in Poughkeepsie, and she sees 
to it that they’re kept busy. If she can’t think of 
anything else, she sends the girl out to scrape the 
doorstone. She might have that done eight or ten 
times a day, even if there wa’n’t a bit of dirt on it. 
Yes, she’s so cranky that every girl soon gets mad 
and leaves. 

“When we was goin’ into the house we rubbed our 
shoes as good as we could on the doormat, though 
the weather had been dry for a long time, and there 
wa’n’t anything on ’em anyway, but she’d take a 
cloth and wipe up our footsteps, or where she thought 
they was.” 

“Well,” Curtis’s wife resumed, “John is a trial 
to her — more so perhaps than the average of men 
would be. He does things no one else would. I was 
at West Park once and went down to the river, where 
he and Julian were working on a boat. The weather 
was very warm, and he’d got so hot he was just 
about burned. In order to cool off he’d taken some 
shavings to put under his head, and laid down with 


262 John Burroughs Talks 

his body on the land and his head in the water so 
only the front of his face was above the surface.” 

“I remember,” Chauncey said, “when Julian 
was a little boy, him and Uncle John was up here, 
and Uncle John wanted Julian to know the worth of 
a dollar. There was some brush and stumps needed 
burning, and Uncle John got us to offer Julian a 
dollar for every barrel of ashes he’d save from burn- 
ing the rubbish. Well, sir, the little cuss would go 
out there and work all day, and he saved quite a few 
ashes.” 

“John has made considerable of a success with his 
books,” Curtis remarked. 

“I’ve read ’em,” Chauncey said. “The travel 
parts are interesting, but I don’t care much for what 
he says about animals and such things. Hiram used 
to tell him, ‘Any blame fool can write about chip- 
munks and birds. ’ ” 

“John wa’n’t like the rest of us,” Curtis remarked 
meditatively. “As a boy he always liked to be tramp- 
ing in the woods and climbing the hills and seeing 
the little wild creatures and posies. He used to go 
to the sugar-bush by himself in the spring and tap 
the trees and make sugar on his own hook. He never 
hunted much, but a few years ago he shot over a 
hundred woodchucks here one summer, just to keep 
the pests down. They’re a great nuisance. You 
take fifteen woodchucks in a meadow, and they’re 
as bad as two cows. They just eat off the tops of the 


Correspondence 263 

grass — that air kills the growth — and they tread 
the grass down and fill it with paths. 

‘This has always been a dairy farm, but John 
was never any great hand to milk. I don’t know as 
I ever saw him drive a team in his life. He did n’t 
like to hoe corn and potatoes very well, but he 
couldn’t always git red of it. Haying was what 
suited him best. He used to help me in that long 
after he left the farm. I and John have done a lot 
of haying together. He was an awful fast mower 
with a scythe, and there wa’n’t many could beat 
him, and he was a good pitcher too. He was rugged 
and strong, and bigger and heavier than I was. He 
could do a lot of work if he was a min’ to, but it’s 

been a long time sin’ he’s cared to do much farm- 

• _ » 
mg. 

I think the frankness with which the different 
members of the Burroughs family talked of each 
other was not peculiar to them, but was character- 
istic of the Catskills dwellers. The individuals found 
fault or commended with an engaging sense of detach- 
ment and intended fairness, and with great confidence 
in their own penetration and judicial poise. Their 
criticisms may seem sometimes blunt or harsh, but 
I would attribute the manner of them to the habit 
of the country rather than to a lack of underlying 
respect and affection. 

This explanation applies also to the personal re- 
marks of Burroughs and his wife. Each was irritat- 


264 John Burroughs Talks 

ing to the other in some ways, but in other essen- 
tials there was harmony. The wife’s excellence as a 
housekeeper, in spite of its being rather extreme, and 
her thrift and simple habits, did much to relieve 
Burroughs of anxiety and to make possible the kind 
of life he wanted to live. Nor were his comments 
on her lacking in real appreciation of a companion 
whom he loved, whatever may have been her faults 
or his that to some degree kept them apart. 

The language used by the farm family was rus- 
tic, and, curiously enough, Burroughs himself often 
dropped into the vernacular of his youth when 
talking with them, or with me. He used such words 
as git, kag, crick, drawed, drownded, and ain’t. 
But at other times what he said was in the simple, 
beautiful English that we know in his books. He 
sometimes employed an oath for emphasis, but he 
swore after the manner of an ancient prophet, and it 
did not seem profanity at all of the careless, vulgar, 
or vicious sort. 

On the Monday afternoon of my stay in the Cats- 
kills, Burroughs and I sat talking on the terrace in 
front of the house in the cool shadows of the maples 
while we watched the men in the steep field down 
the hill raking and loading hay. Again in the evening 
we sat there and looked across the valley to where 
the sun’s low rays lingered on the eastern hilltops and 
gradually faded. 

Burroughs took from his pocket a letter he had 


Correspondence 265 

recently received and showed it to me as an example 
of what the mail brought to him. 

“One of the handicaps of being widely known,” 
he said, “is that it sets all sorts of people writing 
letters to you. In my own case the amount of mail 
I get of late years calls for so much attention that it 
is something of a burden. There are letters from 
friends and letters from strangers, and no end of 
circulars. The circulars all go unread into the waste- 
basket. 

“People write asking about birds and other 
creatures they have seen, and they write to get 
my opinion concerning a great variety of subjects. 
Only last week a New Jersey man sent me a long 
list of impertinent questions on the scope of the 
novel and about a lot of other things. Correspondents 
tell me what they think about my books, some- 
times praising them, sometimes pointing out mis- 
takes they think they have found. Poems come to 
me from authors who hope for favorable comment 
and encouragement. I get prose manuscripts too. 
One novel I received that way I thought well enough 
of to turn it over to my publishers. They printed 
it and it had a large sale, though its literary value 
was rather slender. People send me flowers, they 
request me to address clubs or schools, they beg for 
my autograph, and they ask permission to visit me, 
or they invite me to visit them. 

“Four fifths of my mail is from persons who want 


266 John Burroughs Talks 

some favor. These begging letters and the circulars 
are the damnedest stuff you ever saw. I always 
swear when I open them. But I think I’m pretty 
good about responding to the letters, except that 
I often allow them to accumulate for a while. Then 
I go at them and have a house-cleaning — clear 
the decks, and say something polite and amiable to 
everybody, if I can. 

“One youth, who has since become a popular 
novelist of the hothouse type, sent a long story with 
the information that he had betaken himself to the 
wilderness to write it; and you’d think he’d fairly 
sweltered with emotion all the while he was pro- 
ducing the stuff. He said publishers seemed to have 
a biased antipathy to his work, and if this story, 
written in solitude with such intense feeling, was n’t 
noteworthy, he might as well quit. So far as I was 
concerned, I hoped he ’d quit, but he did n’t. 

“A schoolmaster in the West favored me with a 
couple of books he’d written and a large portrait 
of himself. If a book is sent to me I always write 
to the sender, but I can’t help feeling a certain 
resentment at the intrusion. I try to be honest 
in my response, though what I write is seldom more 
than an agreeable acknowledgment of the receipt of 
a volume. 

“When a fair or some other charitable enterprise 
begs me for an autographed copy of one of my books 
to sell, I forward one. 


Correspondence 267 

“What demands the public does make on an au- 
thor! I get requests for autographs constantly. If 
every reader of an author whose books circulate 
widely sent for his name, what would the poor fellow 
do? He’d simply be overwhelmed — crushed — and 
he’d go and jump down Niagara Falls. 

“A good many people ask for sentiments. Senti- 
ments are beyond me, but I did conjure up one once. 
I’d been trying to think of something appropriate 
when this doggerel popped into my head: 

“‘He seized his pen, an oath he swore. 

And wrote his name for the autograph bore.* 

“I suppose some little imps whispered it in my ear. 
I wrote it, but added a postscript saying it must n’t be 
taken too seriously. 

“A young woman invalid wrote me that she wanted 
to conduct a department in a paper to inspire a love 
of the sea. She said the editors to whom she sub- 
mitted the scheme were cross, and she wanted me to 
father the thing with my reputation. 

“Another woman, soon after I built Slabsides, 
wrote that it was evident I was not well cared for 
living in that lonely woodland cabin, and she wanted 
to come and stay there to make me comfortable. 

“A letter from a third woman referred to my poem 
‘Waiting,’ and to my essay on ‘Strawberries,’ and 
wanted me to take into my home a man friend who 
knew nothing about green fields and who was working 
in a New York bindery and had consumption. 


268 John Burroughs Talks 

“From an Albany school for young women I had 
a letter that asked if I would spare a day sometime 
for a walk and a talk with a few of their teachers, 
and what would I charge? I replied that I would be 
glad to have them come to Riverby for the walk and 
the talk, and as to the charge I did n’t know but I 
would be willing to pay them something for the 
pleasure their visit would give me. Not long after- 
ward half a dozen young women got off the train 
and I spent a delightful day tramping and picnicking 
with them. 

“One of them was an art teacher, and in the course 
of the day she asked if she could paint my portrait. 
I agreed, and after that she came with a companion 
on Saturdays pretty regularly for quite a while. We ’d 
sit in the study. I’d look at one of them and talk 
while the other painted. Sometimes I’d read to them 
as I posed. One day I read a poem from Emerson 
which so touched the artist that she got up and went 
out. When she came back her eyes were tear-stained. 
On a later day, in a confidential talk, she told me 
about herself, and I found that she had quite a pa- 
thetic heart history. 

“When she was starting the portrait I warned 
her that I was a hard subject, and that artists said 
I was never two minutes the same. Wyatt Eaton 
tried to paint me once and gave it up. I called her 
attention to the fact that one side of my face was 
very different from the other side. She painted very 


Correspondence 269 

persistently, but I ’m afraid the picture was a failure. 
The nose was too large, the forehead and other de- 
tails wrong, and yet I thought I saw a sort of family 
resemblance in the portrait. I had a brother who 
looked a little like it. 

“1 never know what sort of a surprise I’ll get 
next in my daily mail. Letters are rather frequent 
from young men who say they want a farm and ask 
me how to get one. Some of these young fellows 
complain that they never have had an opportunity 
to be on a farm. I reply that they must make the 
opportunity. If they have a genuine desire in their 
hearts and are in earnest, they can find the way. 
It is useless to attempt to deal with the forces of 
nature as a farmer unless you love the soil. 

“Once I had a nice letter from a man and wife 
informing me that they had a boy who at the age of 
fifteen was exceedingly morbid. He had no interest 
in anything and was losing his health. Then he 
happened on one of my books, and that seemed to 
open his eyes. Soon he had read them all, and now 
he liked to roam the fields and was an entirely dif- 
ferent person. 

“One letter that tickled me particularly was from a 
schoolboy, who said : ‘I got one of your books through 
the mail, marked on the wrapper second-class matter . 
I have read it, and it is first-class matter. The bind- 
ing and the get-up may be second-class, but the 
matter is first-class.’ 


270 • John Burroughs Talks 

“Those are examples of the missives the mails 
bring me; and I have visitors in no less variety — 
visitors announced and unannounced, visitors who 
are distinguished and those who are not, visitors who 
come because they know my books and like them, 
others who come because they have an axe to grind 
or out of idle curiosity, visitors who are cranks and 
those who are bores, and those who are a delight. 
Occasionally a visiting squadron numbers over a 
hundred. 

“I remember one visitor at Riverby who was a 
famous artist. He came in style, dressed in his best 
as if for some Fifth Avenue social occasion, and I 
was in my old farm-clothes. He was an admirer 
of my work and a fine fellow, I guess. But he could 
n’t get out of the fashionable clothes atmosphere, 
and I could n’t get into it. We could n’t mix. When 
he was going away, he blurted out that he’d made a 
fool of himself coming to see me in such a rig, and 
apologized. 

“On a recent Saturday afternoon a doctor who 
was a perfect stranger arrived at Riverby without 
any forewarning. He stayed on till evening and I 
invited him to have supper. I was doing my own 
housekeeping for a few days just then. After supper 
he said he would stay overnight, if I wanted him to. 
I told him I could take care of him, and I had him 
with me the next day. When afternoon came, I in- 
formed him that I had to be away for a couple of 


Correspondence 271 

hours, but he might make himself comfortable till 
I returned. To this he agreed, and it was Monday 
before he left. He was n’t profound, and he talked 
mostly about himself. Heavens! what are you going 
to do with such a guest? 

“Some of those who come cheer me and do me 
good, but I can’t help feeling a certain strain over 
such a plethora of company, and there are times 
when it would be a relief to look forward to two 
weeks when I would n’t have a single visitor. The 
letters I receive produce a similar effect on me, and 
if they’d stop coming for occasional periods I’d 
rejoice.” 

Tuesday morning Burroughs and I left the old 
farm to go to the village and get a train. We took 
a short way across the pastures and loitered in a 
patch of woods, where, under the rough projecting 
ledges, Burroughs found a phoebe’s nest with young 
in it. He remarked on the security of its position 
ar*d the impossibility of any animal enemies finding 
it or getting at the birds. Down below was a heap of 
rubbish, to which he called my attention — ruins 
of former nests, showing that the phoebes had built 
there year after year for a long time. When we had 
started on, he observed a little cave in the rocks and 
exclaimed because he had never discovered it when 
he was a boy. 


XVI 

August , 1912 

WOODCHUCK LODGE AMD THE HAY-BARN STUDY 

I went again to Roxbury, and this time found Bur- 
roughs living in an old farmhouse which he called 
“Woodchuck Lodge.” The building had originally 
been painted, but only faint traces of the paint now 
lingered on the clapboards. It stood on the borders 
of the ancestral Burroughs farm. Behind it were 
fields rising to where the maple trees of the farm 
sap-bush showed against the sky. In front was a 
narrow yard that merged into the highway, and 
then the land dipped down to a deep valley beyond 
which were big blue hills. At one side of the dwelling 
was a little garden. 

A good deal of repairing and improving had been 
done to the house, and in the heaviest of this work 
Burroughs had the assistance of his nephew Chaun- 
cey, who was something of an expert in carpentering. 

Presently I ran across Chauncey, and he said: 
“ Uncle John had a great time while we were at that 
job. He’d write a little, and hunt woodchucks a 
little, but most of the time he was helping me fix 
over the house. I never in my life saw him take more 
comfort. But he wa’n’t very careful of my gun that 
he borrowed to use shooting the woodchucks. He 



Writing in the Hay-Barn 


'j- 




Sitting at his Schoolboy Desk 



Woodchuck Lodge and the Hay-Barn Study 


Woodchuck Lodge 273 

did n’t have the proper kind of powder, and he did n’t 
keep the gun clean, and finally he busted it. He stays 
up here through the summer and on into November. 
He don’t spend any more time than he can help down 
at West Park.” 

Burroughs did his writing in a solitary, weather- 
worn old hay-barn a short distance up the road. 
There I found him, and I thought that the venerable 
author in his rustic apparel, which included a coarse, 
wide-brimmed straw hat, matched the surroundings 
very well. 

I asked him if Slabsides had been abandoned, and 
he said : “ The swamp there produced very creditable 
crops, but we had none of the bonanza years I antic- 
ipated, and the prices for some shipments would n’t 
pay for packing and the express charges. One season 
the celery crop was a total failure on account of a hot, 
dry May. Amasy got discouraged, took to drinking, 
neglected his work, and finally moved away. So I 
let the swamp grow to grass. 

“The charm of Slabsides had faded, and then I 
realized that the place in all the world that appealed 
most to me was the old boyhood farm, and that I 
was an alien elsewhere. I’d been homesick for over 
forty years. Yes, the past has a peculiar hold on 
me, and I’d been yearning for the scenes of my 
youth and for the contentment I found amid the 
familiar hills. The landscape had come to be a sort 
of outlying part of me, and it was a lucky day when 


274 John Burroughs Talks 

I decided that here I would spend the rest of my 
summers. 

“I began to make the old dwelling yonder my 
warm-weather home in 1908. It was built by my 
brother Curtis in his young manhood, after father 
had given him half the farm. A snug old house was 
there already, but he concluded to build a larger and 
more convenient dwelling. Up to that time father 
had been comfortably prosperous, and he might have 
continued to prosper if he had n’t borrowed money 
to help build the new house. Curtis did n’t do well 
and could n’t repay the loan, and afterward father’s 
circumstances were rather straitened. I had to fur- 
nish money to keep the place in the family. I 
wasn’t at all sure I ’d ever get back what I ’d loaned, 
but I would n’t crowd for it. As things stand I ’ve 
lost fifteen hundred dollars, but I don’t regret what 
I ’ve done. The place is still home to me and always 
will be. I ’ve spent most of my life somewhere else, 
but never have taken root in any other spot. 

“Since I went out into the world I’ve frequently 
come back to the old farm. The air seems to agree 
with me better than that down by the Hudson, and 
how restful the long, flowing lines of the landscape 
are! No other region on earth compares with this 
for me. 

“I recently had a call from some of my boyhood 
companions, who many years ago made their homes 
in Iowa and prospered. But you could n’t give me 


Woodchuck Lodge 275 

that whole State if I had to live there. I think a flat 
prairie country would kill me. 

“You’d think I’d escape visitors up among these 
remote Catskill hills. But, no, I have a pretty 
steady run of them. I’ve had as many as forty or 
fifty come in automobiles in a single day. 

“The aspect of my native hills is the same I’ve 
always known, but agriculturally the region im- 
presses me as more dilapidated than it used to be. 
Things are not kept up so snug and trim. Before 
the Civil War nearly every farmer succeeded with 
his farm. But since then they nearly all fail. They 
won’t live as simply as in the old days — they must 
wear gloves and carry watches, and they smoke, 
and they drive fast. They seem to me to have de- 
teriorated. They have n’t the mental and physical 
vigor of their ancestors, are less picturesque and less 
individual. There used to be many odd personalities 
among them where now you find very few. The old- 
timers had more energy in doing good or doing evil, 
whichever way they were inclined. 

“But in my boyhood the country was compara- 
tively new, and the people retained something of the 
pioneer vigor and resourcefulness. Perhaps their de- 
scendants that have most nearly reproduced their 
type have moved on to other frontiers or drifted to 
the cities. I remember one man who, when he was 
drunk, would get out of bed in the middle of the 
night, hitch up a horse, and compel his wife to go 


276 John Burroughs Talks 

with him in the wagon for a wild ride across the 
pastures. That was his idea of fun. It was anything 
but fun for her. 

“The Catskills dwellers are easily contented now, 
and are not very aspiring even in their pleasures. 
If they have enough to eat and wear, and have 
reasonably good buildings to shelter them and their 
farm animals and crops, they want little else. There 
is not much desire to travel, and they derive slight 
pleasure from literature. The local newspaper, the 
doings of neighbors, and visits to or from relatives, 
cover most of their interests beyond mere bread- 
getting. If a man makes more than he spends in his 
ordinary life on the farm, he does n’t plan ways to 
enjoy his surplus, but puts it in the bank, and his 
pleasure in his money comes from the contemplation 
of the gradually increasing deposit. 

“The house that Curtis built had latterly been 
inhabited by various poor families and was a good 
deal dilapidated. I’ve laid new floors in the lower 
rooms, patched the broken plastering, built a wood- 
shed, and put an ample rustic piazza on the front, 
and with my own hands I’ve made a consider- 
able amount of furniture. I searched the woodland 
for crooked sticks to make the bow-legs of the 
dining-room table, and used other crooked sticks 
for my piazza balustrade, and to support my book- 
shelves. 

“I sleep on the piazza, and I get up early, for when 


Woodchuck Lodge 277 

the sun looks over the eastern horizon and points his 
fiery finger at me I can’t lie abed. 

“All the birds I saw in boyhood — apparently 
the very same ones — are here flitting and singing 
in their old haunts, and I see what seem to be the 
same chipmunks, squirrels, and woodchucks. 

“For quite a while a sculptor has been boarding 
at a neighboring farmhouse. He has made some clay 
models of me. One is a bust. Another, about eighteen 
inches high, represents me seated on a stone wall 
looking off in a listening attitude with my right hand 
shading my eyes. The models aren’t quiet and 
simple enough to please me. The bust reminds me of 
Roscoe Conkling, a politician whom I don’t in the 
least desire to resemble. But I believe it does n’t sat- 
isfy the sculptor either, and he’s going to try again. 
When he is n’t working on the seated figure, we keep 
it on the piazza. A screech owl lit on the clay head 
one night and left the marks of its claws. 

“I call the place Woodchuck Lodge because the 
woodchuck tribe have their holes all around the 
house. I ’ve had a good many adventures with them. 
Once I set a trap in my garden to save my peas from 
the marauders. The next morning I had Mr. Wood- 
chuck by the paw, and he did n’t look guilty a bit, 
but bristled up as if to say, ‘These are my peas!’ 

“One day I tried to run down a woodchuck. That 
was a very absurd thing for me to try to do, but he 
was out in the field away from his hole. Well, I got 


278 John Burroughs Talks 

to the hole first, and he stopped to see what I’d do 
next. Not far away was a stone of suitable size for 
a weapon, and I said, ‘If I can get that stone I can 
kill that chuck.’ 

“So I made a dash. I thought I’d get back to the 
hole before the chuck made a move, but he did n’t 
hesitate a moment, and by the time I put my hand 
on the stone he was safe under ground. 

“I had a study at the house, but I can’t write when 
others are talking, and of course, if women are in the 
house, they have to talk. That disturbed the current 
of my thought, and I sought seclusion in this old 
barn. I 'm closer to nature here than I was in the 
house. I open the big barn-doors, and then I have 
a wide near view of fields and woods. Some of my 
friends don’t think this is a fit place for me, but the 
barn isn’t occupied by farm animals and it’s clean 
and sweet, and I like it. 

“What do you think of my desk? I improvised it 
out of a big box that had been used for a hencoop, 
and by propping the box up on sticks I’ve got it the 
right height to suit me. Then I put some boards on 
top to make the desk surface more ample, and I 
covered them with brown paper. That gives me a 
desk on which I can set the market-basket I use to 
carry my manuscripts to and from the house, and 
there’s plenty of space to spread out my books and 
writing paraphernalia. The hay-barn study attracts 
quite a little interest, and people come to look in at 


Woodchuck Lodge 279 

the open door to see the man behind an old hencoop 
writing essays for the magazines. 

“ In the preface of my book 4 Riverby,’ published 
nearly twenty years ago, I said it was probably my 
final volume of outdoor essays, but the outdoor 
themes proved not to be exhausted for me after all. 
I got fresh stimulus in gathering new material by 
dwelling at Slabsides, and now I’ve changed my 
environment again by coming to live for the major 
portion of my time on the old farm. I find I can 
work here when I can’t work at either Riverby or 
Slabsides, and, best of all, I’ve been brought into 
contact with nature in ways that without shifting 
my abode I ’d have missed. 

“I’m lucky to have that apple orchard and stone 
wall close at hand out in front. They are regarded 
with great favor by the wild creatures. I often pause 
in my writing and sit enjoying the crows and squirrels 
and woodchucks, and the farm animals that are 
within sight or hearing. I’ve put up a hammock that 
I lie in when I want to rest. Morning is my writing 
time. Afternoons I go for walks, visit with friends, 
hoe in the garden, and pick off the potato-bugs, and 
perhaps I go gunning for woodchucks, which I’m 
obliged to shoot in self-defense.” 

When we started to go to the house, Burroughs 
picked some apples from a drooping branch and took 
them along to have them made into apple sauce. His 


280 John Burroughs Talks 

house-companions just then were Dr. Clara Barrus, 
her sister, and a young woman artist from Georgia 
who was painting his portrait. 

Dr. Barrus was a successful physician and a capa- 
ble writer, who had been acquainted with Burroughs 
for some years and had seen the increasing need of 
relieving him from some of the burden that inter- 
fered with his physical comfort and well-being, and 
likewise with his gathering material for future books 
and recording his thoughts and observations. So she 
gradually gave up her chosen field of work and de- 
voted herself more and more to his care, wherever 
he chose to be, serving as housekeeper, physician, 
and literary helper. There is every reason to believe 
that this prolonged his life and enabled him to write 
much that otherwise would have remained unwritten. 

Burroughs posed for the artist in the early after- 
noon and for the sculptor just before dusk. The bust 
on which the sculptor was working was on a rough 
framework at the rear of the house. 

In the middle of the afternoon we walked over to 
Burroughs’s boyhood home. “Curtis died in June,” 
he said, “and the place has a lonely aspect now. It 
is n’t the same to me.” 

On the way back he noticed a squirrel hole by the 
roadside and stopped to look at it more closely. 

Supper at Woodchuck Lodge was served on the 
piazza, but Burroughs did not eat. “I’ve been 
troubled by sleeplessness,” he explained to me, “and 



The Bust and the Busted 



The “ Old Stone Juq where Burroughs began going to School 



The West Settlement Schoolhouse 




281 


Woodchuck Lodge 

to overcome that I omit supper or take only a trifle. 
Oh! I have to be very cautious about my food, es- 
pecially on festive occasions and when I’m away 
from home visiting. Last winter I spent two weeks 
in New York attending dinners which I could n’t eat.” 

He brought out his Victrola and set it going. “I 
could n’t live without it,” he declared. One of the 
merrier tunes made him attempt a little jig to its 
accompaniment. 

Bedtime came early. “I like to retire soon after 
eight,” Burroughs said. “I wake about three, and 
get up at five.” 

A small rear upper room was assigned to me. The 
night was very quiet, and the most noticeable sounds 
that I heard were the water trickling into a tub at the 
back door and the eerie twitter of a little screech 
owl. About daylight I looked out, and there was 
Burroughs washing his hands and face in a basin 
set on a bench. When I got downstairs the fire was 
started in the kitchen stove and he was getting 
breakfast for the household, as was his custom. 
Things did not go entirely to his liking in his cooking 
manipulations, if one may judge from his exclaiming, 
“Oh! that milk is thick! Thunder and lightning!” 


XVII 

October , 1912 

ROOSEVELT 

T 

I reached Riverby in the early morning and found 
Mr. and Mrs. Burroughs in the kitchen. She was 
doing the dishes, and he had his mail before him on 
one corner of the kitchen table, the bare boards of 
which were whitened by much cleaning. The table 
was not devoted entirely to strictly kitchen purposes, 
for at the back were piles of magazines and news- 
papers. Other piles of periodicals were on the broad 
window-sill. 

Mrs. Burroughs got about rather lamely, and 
complained of rheumatism and because Burroughs 
had n't told her till the last minute what time of day 
I was coming. He brought a lunch for me from the 
pantry, and she told him to spread a paper on the 
table before he set down the things. She soon left 
to spend the day in Poughkeepsie. 

“Poughkeepsie seems to have a great attraction 
for her,” Burroughs said. “I want to go to California 
this winter, but she does n’t like to meet people. 
Poughkeepsie suits her for a winter resort, and I can’t 
stand it.” 

After he had cleared away the food and the dishes. 


Roosevelt 283 

we walked for a while and spent a little time with 
the two older of Burroughs’s three grandchildren, 
Betty and Ursula, aged about six and four. The 
grape season was past, but we found a few clusters 
clinging to the vines, and Burroughs filled his hat 
and carried them to the house. He got dinner, a 
process which consisted mainly in preparing some 
soup. Each of us had a newspaper under our dishes 
when we ate. After we finished, Burroughs washed 
the dishes beneath the hot-water faucet. 

“My wife would be horrified to see me washing 
dishes this way,” he told me. “She would have me 
get a dishpan and put ’em in it and wash ’em in the 
formal, orthodox manner. But why not do things in 
the quickest way?” 

When the task was done he remarked, “That little 
horse was soon curried, was n’t she?” 

Presently we went to the study under the brow 
of the hill. The day had grown warm, and numerous 
flies were buzzing about. Burroughs picked up from 
the table a stout rubber band and, as we talked, 
snapped at the flies that lit on his trousers, or shoes, 
or elsewhere within reach, and he rarely failed to hit 
his mark with fatal results. “That’s a sudden and 
desirable form of death for the flies,” he explained. 
“They never know what’s happened to them.” 

He kept very steadily at this employment, and 
the floor became strewn with his victims as if a dish 
of huckleberries had been upset. 


284 John Burroughs Talks 

I asked him about his acquaintance with Roose- 
velt and he said: 

“I first met him at a club dinner in New York in 
the eighties, when he had a ranch out in Dakota. 
He came and sat by me, told me how much he en- 
joyed my books, and invited me to visit his ranch. 
I thought him very vigorous, alive all over, with 
a great variety of interests; and it was surprising 
how well he knew the birds and animals. He’s a 
rare combination of the sportsman and the natu- 
ralist. 

“When he was elected Governor of New York 
State, he asked me to come to Albany, and I spent 
a day or two at his official mansion there. 

“Not long after he became President he had me 
down to the White House for a few days. He was 
very busy, but one afternoon we drove out to the 
Rock Creek region and went for a five-mile walk. 
We walked like hunters on a trail, tearing through the 
woods and over the country. It was December, and 
slush and pools of water abounded. Roosevelt was 
fat and heavy, and he often took out his hand- 
kerchief to wipe the sweat off his brow. My un- 
derclothes got as wet as if I’d been in swimming. 
There was nothing to see. We simply had a walk. 
He talked most of the time, except when he got out 
of wind. We went as if on a wager until it was get- 
ting dark. We did n’t have any extra clothing to 
put on when we returned to the carriage, and it’s a 


Roosevelt 285 

wonder I did n’t catch pneumonia or something on 
our drive back. 

“I dined at the White House and met Root and 
Taft. I can’t say that I took to either of them. 
Roosevelt did n’t put on any airs, and was n’t a bit 
more authoritative than in previous years, but was 
the same cordial man, keenly alive to everything. 

“In the spring of 1903 I went out to the Yellow- 
stone with him. He was glad to get away from the 
crowd and enjoyed the trip like a boy. He represents 
the intense activity and energy of our present day in 
the best American sense, and it is all right for him, 
but if I were to live like Roosevelt I should die in a 
day. 

“One time I asked him, ‘What are you going to 
do when you get through with the presidency?’ 

“‘Don’t you worry,’ he said. ‘I shall find enough 
to keep me busy.’ 

“He ate three times what an ordinary man would, 
and assimilated it. He would use several spoonfuls 
of sugar in his cup of coffee. I was surprised to see 
him dump in the sugar. So much would have made 
me sick. But his digestion was good, and he had 
boundless energy and was a tireless worker. What a 
versatile live wire he is! He does n’t hesitate to fight, 
if there’s need, in order to put his policies through. 
I shrink from that sort of thing, and sometimes I’d 
like to kick myself all around the country for being 
such a tenderfoot. 


286 John Burroughs Talks 

“You remember what a serious coal strike we had 
in Roosevelt’s administration, and how the miners 
and mine-owners got deadlocked over their differ- 
ences in a way that threatened national disaster. He 
said : * I called in J. Pierpont Morgan and told him I 
had a man appointed to take charge of the mines, and 
that the Government would get them in operation at 
once unless the mine-owners made a prompt settle- 
ment with the strikers. I wasn’t going to be any 
James Buchanan, and by doing nothing let the coun- 
try go to wreck. We’d have mined coal, and lots of it. 
Morgan was mad, but he saw I meant business, and 
he stopped the strike. He and the rest of those men 
don’t like me one bit, but I like them. They’re big 
men, but they ’re narrow. 

“‘I believe in being perfectly honest, and in ful- 
filling political promises. Our financial and industrial 
kings are finding out that my words have to be taken 
at their face value. The Republican platform bound 
the party to take some action in controlling ihe 
trusts. Senators said, “It’s all very well to promise, 
but action is another thing.” However, I insisted 
on keeping the faith. My methods are the same in 
diplomacy. There’s no dickering and nothing round- 
about. I tell foreign powers just what I ’m going to 
do, and it scares them. They don’t know what to 
make of anything so unusual.’ 

“Roosevelt fills a very creditable place among our 
Presidents. Washington belonged to the old order 


Roosevelt 287 

of English gentlemen, and he fitted his times and did 
his work well. We had an entirely different type in 
Lincoln. He was n’t an aristocrat. He was a very 
great man on his human side, and equally great on 
his intellectual side. He always looked worried and 
weighed down.. There was no egotism in him. He was 
not thinking of himself or the impression he made. 
Calmness and respose were characteristic of him. 
He was patient, long-suffering, wise. 

“ Cleveland was another notable President. He 
had something of Lincoln’s qualities. I saw him after 
he was President, and I shall never forget his look 
of honesty, humility, and genuineness. 

“ If only Roosevelt had a little of Lincoln’s meek- 
ness and forbearance, what an improvement it would 
be! But he has that terrible domineering pugnacity 
and desire to be before the public. He goes to ex- 
tremes in denunciation, and his treatment of former 
friends is sometimes distressing. I wish he would n’t 
cheapen himself. However, although he is imperious, 
he is fair-minded, and I don’t think he ever let the 
politicians use him in any unworthy way. I have 
absolute confidence in his sincerity and the integrity 
of his motives. He does n’t rank with Lincoln or 
Cleveland, but he’ll make a big spot of some sort 
on our history. 

“One summer, while he was President, he came 
to see me. He and Mrs. Roosevelt voyaged from 
Oyster Bay up the Hudson in a Government steam 


288 John Burroughs Talks 

yacht. They arrived on the 10th of July, the hottest 
day of the whole year. We walked from the river up 
to Slabsides, and Roosevelt sweat his white linen 
coat right through at the back. 

“When we got to my swamp cabin, I had plenty 
of cold water, which he drank in copious drafts. I 
had baked potatoes, broiled a chicken, and cooked 
some peas picked right from the vines. Those peas 
were Telephone Peas, and there’s nothing this side 
of heaven equals them as a pea. Roosevelt is an 
omnivorous reader, and he went through my library 
at Slabsides in short order — gulped it as he would 
an oyster. 

“Later in the day we went down to Riverby, and 
the neighbors came to my house there to meet the 
President and have some ice-cream. 

“In the last year of his presidency he invited me 
to go with him down to Pine Knot in Virginia, where 
he said he had a ‘Slabsides.* We made the hundred- 
mile journey in May in the President’s private car. 
Mrs. Roosevelt accompanied us. A farmer with a 
carriage met us at the station, and we drove to 
Roosevelt’s camp, ten miles from the railroad and a 
mile from the highway. His ‘Slabsides’ was a great 
barn-like structure standing in the woods. There 
was one big room that took up all the ground floor. 
In this the cooking was done at one end, and the table 
about which we gathered to eat or to spend our eve- 
ning leisure was at the other end. Upstairs were two 


Roosevelt 289 

or three bedrooms. Some colored people — a man 
and a couple of women — did the work, but at night 
went away to where they lived. 

“Roosevelt had taken me down to his camp in 
order to have me identify the birds, and we would 
drive to favorable places and then get out and stroll 
around. We identified about seventy-five birds in 
the four days we were there. He taught me two of 
them and I taught him two. It was really remarkable 
how well he knew the birds and their notes. 

“We were there on Sunday and drove three miles 
to a little Episcopal church, where I listened to the 
dullest sermon I ’ve heard in my life. All the gentry 
of the region were there, and I was introduced to 
some rather brisk, bright men. I don’t think any 
of ’em had ever heard of me. 

“After service Roosevelt said he would show me 
a Lincoln sparrow. The day was warm, and we lay 
down in the grass in a field. Roosevelt actually re- 
laxed, which was very unusual for him. But we 
talked. He is seldom silent in his waking hours un- 
less he has a book to read. We waited an hour, but 
failed to hear our bird. 

“When we were out another time, I mentioned 
that I had n’t heard the little gray gnatcatcher since 
I lived in Washington thirty years before. 

“‘I’ll take you where you can hear one,’ he said. 
‘Come on.’ 

“ We went over a hill. ‘ I ’ve heard it here,’ he said. 


290 John Burroughs Talks 

“We stopped, and, sure enough, there it was! 

“One evening, after the lamps had been lighted, 
we sat in the great bare lower room of the house. 
Mrs. Roosevelt was crocheting and the President 
and I were reading. I had a book he had recom- 
mended to me about the man-eating lions of Africa. 
Suddenly Roosevelt brought his hand down with a 
tremendous thump on the table. I was startled, for 
I had just reached the gruesome part of a lion story. 
Mrs. Roosevelt was startled, too. She turned to her 
husband and asked reprovingly, ‘Why do you make 
such a noise?’ 

“ ‘I was slapping a mosquito,’ he replied, but he 
struck it a blow that would have killed a cat. 

“Once I said to him: ‘Mr. President, it seems to 
me it’s not safe for you to be here in this lonely 
place. Cranks who wanted to do you harm could 
get at you very easily.’ 

“‘Let ’em come! Oh, I can defend myself!’ he 
exclaimed, and slapped his hip. He carried a re- 
volver. He’d have used it, too. There’s no doubting 
his courage. He showed himself to be without fear 
to the point of recklessness in the Spanish War. 

“In my room upstairs was a flying squirrel’s nest, 
a mass of stuff on a beam. It consisted mostly of dry 
grass and bark. There were young ones in it which 
were old enough to begin to cut up. They went 
thrashing round the room and running over things 
after I’d gone to bed and kept me awake nearly all 


Roosevelt ' 291 

the first night. When morning came I asked the 
hired man to help me put ’em out. But that didn’t 
suit the President. ‘ I like the idea of having these 
wild creatures in the house,’ he declared. ‘Take ’em 
into my room.’ 

“He assisted in the moving, and one of them bit 
his hand. The blood ran down, but he said, ‘Oh, I 
don’t mind that!’ and he hung on to the squirrel. 

“We went out together one evening. The moon 
shone, and I saw a night hawk on the ground. I said, 
‘I bet you can drop your hat over that nighthawk.’ 

“He would have, too, if his foot had n’t struck a 
stick when he got close to the bird and scared it 
away. He was just as eager as a boy to get that 
nighthawk into his hands. 

“Roosevelt was a big eater, a sound sleeper, always 
cheerful, fond of telling humorous stories, and his 
hearty laugh could be heard over the tops of the 
trees. Probably we never had a President who en- 
joyed the responsibility of that office as much. ‘I 
like the big work,’ he said, but added that it would 
be the happiest day of his life when he was free again 
and no longer needed to be on his good behavior. 

“He’d picked out Taft to succeed him. Well, 
Taft is good-natured, but weak. I told Roosevelt, 
when we were down in Virginia, that Taft was not 
a strong enough man for the presidency, but he 
pooh-poohed, and said I did n’t know Taft, and 
was mistaken in my estimate. But he found out I 


292 John Burroughs Talks 

was right after Taft had been in the White House a 
few months. 

“Each time Roosevelt has met me since we visited 
the Virginia woods together, the first thing he’s said 
is, ‘Have you written up that trip yet?’ 

“His craving for publicity is insatiable. I have n’t 
written up the trip, and I never shall. I wrote a little 
book about our Yellowstone trip and a visit to his 
Oyster Bay home, and I’ve said all I want to say 
about my jaunts with him.” 

Like many of Burroughs’s observations this final 
statement expressed his feeling at the time and it 
need not be accepted in entire literalness. As long 
as Roosevelt was alive it held. But after his death 
Burroughs evidently concluded to write the short 
account of their Virginia trip which is found in 
“Under the Maples.” 

Curiously enough, Roosevelt’s enthusiasm for 
Taft waned and he became sharply critical, while 
Burroughs was won by Taft’s support of the League 
of Nations to applaud his courage and statesmanship. 

When Burroughs finished speaking of Roosevelt, 
he asked: “Have you noticed how the modern paint- 
ers run to purple? I see more and more such pictures 
in the exhibitions every year, and they strike so dis- 
cordant a note that they seem to rule the whole room. 
I want to blind my eyes. That sort of painting is a 
kind of disease, I should say. The pictures are night- 


Roosevelt 293 

mares — like the bad dreams we sometimes have. 
I do declare they are sickening — that great riot of 
color with no accurate drawing! It’s a debauch! 

“The artists claim they see nature that way, but 
if they do their eyes are not normal. I believe such 
painting is a mere affectation. Certainly I don’t see 
a purple world, and I don’t think the fault is in my 
eyesight. You see purple if you go to Alaska — big 
gulfs filled with it, but it is melted in the air — spirit- 
ualized — wonderful ! Heaven only knows what those 
fellows whose pictures are in the exhibitions would 
do with it if they attempted to paint the scenes. 

“The feeling their pictures arouse in me may show 
that I’m no judge of art, and yet Gilder of the 
‘Century’ often took me to exhibitions there in New 
York and evidently valued my impressions. 

“I think I’ve learned now pretty definitely how to 
keep well. It’s a knowledge a good many acquire 
when they’re nearly ready to get through. I’m care- 
ful to eat proper food and not too much, and I keep 
watch of the machine to see that it’s working prop- 
erly. If I get tired in the forenoon and want to go and 
lie down, or if I have a headache, I know some- 
thing is wrong. Then I take in sail in eating. At 
; times a little calomel is helpful. That sweeps the 
clouds right away. It clears the skies at once. But 
I don’t think I’d need it if I did n’t eat too rich food. 
The modern cooking tempts me. 

“Most of our physical ills drift in at the mouth. 


294 John Burroughs Talks 

Keep your digestion good and you are all right, but 
let the system get weakened by the unsatisfactory 
working of the digestive processes, and the germs 
rush to arms. There are germs in us all the time ready 
to seize such an opportunity; and whatever it is that 
pulls us down — whether unsuitable food or over- 
work or worry — is dangerous. If your system is in 
proper tone, tuberculosis could howl around you day 
and night and not effect a foothold. 

“Why should we go blundering along paying doc- 
tor’s bills because we don’t know what to eat? Doc- 
tors have never helped me. I was occasionally sub- 
ject to what old people called a bilious turn, and the 
doctors gave me quinine by the peck. But that 
wa’n’t what I needed. I understand the meaning of 
such an attack now. It ’s like a red flag, and I say, 
‘Here’s danger!’ and am on the alert. 

“ I don’t drink tea or coffee, or use tobacco, and I 
eat light suppers and am abstemious in the use of 
fruit — raw fruit especially. I think no one ought to 
eat raw fruit at night. The result of simple careful 
living is that I don’t have rheumatiz, and at the age 
of seventy-five I am about as spry as ever I was. 

“The ignorance of the laws of health among coun- 
try people is amazing. How the arrival of the doctor 
used to cheer them up in my boyhood when some 
member of a family was sick! To be sure, they’d 
wait till the ailing one was ’most dead before they 
sent for him, but they had great confidence in his 


Roosevelt 295 

powers. He’d come galloping over the hills with his 
medicines in his saddlebags, and after he’d seen the 
patient and sized up the situation, he’d go to the 
kitchen and call for this and that, and prepare the 
remedy. The cure seemed certain, there was such 
an air of the inevitable about it all, and what great 
doses he would give! 

“My son gets ready for winter by putting on 
double windows and making his house perfectly tight, 
and the family are sick half the time all winter long. 
They have dreadful colds — not only the children 
but the grown people — and I think it’s because 
they don’t get enough fresh air.” 

Burroughs talked more or less about his own health 
and health in general nearly every time I saw him. 
One might infer from what he said that he was some- 
thing of an invalid, but really I think I always found 
him as comfortably vigorous as anybody could ex- 
pect to be at his age. Even his stomach, which he 
so often referred to as his chronically weak organ, 
probably functioned pretty well on the whole. 

Once he decided that eggs did n’t agree with him. 
Another time he explained that mankind had several 
superfluous internal organs, and that if these could be 
safely removed the average life would be much longer. 
Various foods stirred his enthusiasm for somewhat 
uncertain periods. There was quite a while that his 
picture and commendation were widely published 
in connection with the advertising of a patent medi- 


296 John Burroughs Talks 

cine. He at first was convinced that he used this 
medicine with marked benefit, and he said it con- 
tained phosphorus, which was a brain food. The 
manufacturers furnished him free all he would con- 
sume. 

He was inclined to make severe comments on those 
who used tobacco. “What habits people have!” 
he once said. “There’s Alden, editor of ‘Harper’s 
Magazine.’ He smokes only once a day, but that ’s 
all day. He sits in his office and sucks his old pipe the 
whole time. 

“Most young fellows who go to college learn to 
smoke there if they have n’t learned before. I ’m 
thankful that Julian did n’t acquire the habit while 
he was at Harvard.” 

As we loitered in Burroughs’s study that after- 
noon, he went on to say: “Last winter I kept a 
wounded ’possum in here for several weeks. I nursed 
him till he was better and then sent him forth. An- 
other time I had a flying squirrel in the study, but it 
made such desperate efforts to get out that I left a 
window open one night and let it escape. 

“Skunk skins are high this year. You can get five 
dollars apiece for the best ones. With such a bounty, 
the young fellows are going to hunt ’em, trap ’em, 
go after ’em every way, and they’ll clear ’em out. 
The skunk is a very useful animal. It eats a great 
many grubs and insects that are farm pests. 

“Twice I’ve been chased by a skunk. The skunk 


Roosevelt 297 

would come toward me flourishing his tail in a gay, 
jaunty sort of way, and I retreated in good order. 
Skunks are pretty sure marksmen, and I did n’t 
want him to bring his battery to bear.” 

Burroughs had paused meditatively, when he 
suddenly jumped to his feet, exclaiming, “Good 
Heavens! did my wife say I was to meet her at the 
station? I ’ll go to the house and see if she has come.” 

He returned shortly, relieved to find that she was 
not there. We went together to meet the next train, 
from which she alighted loaded with bundles. She 
turned those over to us, saying, “I’ve done a good 
deal more running about trading than I ought to have 
done.” 

I suggested that perhaps it would limber her up 
and that she would be as spry as a cricket the next 
day. But she responded dismally that her rheuma- 
tism was sure to be worse as a consequence, and in the 
morning she would n’t be able to get out of bed 
without Mr. Burroughs’s help. “And what do you 
think?” she added. “I have to make the fire and 
get the breakfast before he comes downstairs.” 

“But why do you insist on having breakfast at 
half -past six?” he retorted. “At most places where 
I visit they don’t have it until eight.” 

She thought that was scandalous and gave no 
chance for a proper start with the day’s work. 


XVIII 

November, 1912 

TRAVELS AT HOME AND ABROAD 

Late in the fall of 1912 Burroughs made one of his 
several visits to my farm home at the foot of Mount 
Holyoke on the bank of the Connecticut River. He 
brought with him a package of his favorite breakfast- 
food, and thus made sure he would not have to do 
without it. 

The next day was Sunday, chilly, windy, and 
clouded. After we had breakfast we went for a walk 
up to a mountain-side pasture, where we discovered 
a strange ice formation on some weeds. Apparently 
the stems had been water-soaked just before the 
weather turned frosty, with the result that they 
burst and let the freezing water gradually exude to 
form a curious spiral icy efflorescence an inch or more 
in diameter. Burroughs was keenly interested, for 
he had never before seen anything like it. 

As we crossed a mossy barren slope of the pasture 
he said, “If this was mine, I’d plough the daylights 
out of it.” 

He was always alert to see the possibilities of im- 
proving land, and the neglect of such possibilities, 
or waste of any sort on the farms, disturbed him. 


Travels at Home and Abroad 299 

There had been a severe cold snap very early that 
autumn, and many fields were strewn with onions 
that had been spoiled by freezing. He mourned over 
those onions — food, for which so many people were 
hungry, rendered useless. “And I’ve been paying 
ten cents a quart for onions recently/’ he said. 

I invited him to go to church, and he asked about 
his attire — would he have to change his soft shirt 
for a starched one? He hated the latter. 

I responded that his beard was such a screen no 
one would know what sort of a shirt he wore. So 
he did n’t change it. The minister was a man of 
culture with a poetic temperament, and his sermons 
often had a good deal of charm, but, as luck would 
have it, this time he tackled predestination, which, 
to Burroughs, was an antiquated and perfectly hope- 
less topic. 

After we returned home and had eaten dinner, 
Burroughs did some prowling among my bookshelves, 
and read and talked, and dozed by the fire. In one 
bookshelf nook he found Epictetus, Bacon’s Essays, 
Aristotle, and that type of literature, and it was with 
these books that he lingered longest and of these 
that he spoke with most affection. His own writings 
contain numerous references to famous authors, 
especially in philosophy, science, and poetry. Those 
quoted oftenest are probably Whitman, Emerson, 
and Darwin. Others that get frequent mention are 
Tennyson, Wordsworth, Gilbert White, Thoreau, 


300 John Burroughs Talks 

and Huxley, and, in his later books, Fabre, Bergson, 
and Maeterlinck. 

We talked about the journeys he had made, in our 
own country and elsewhere. “I have never been a 
great traveler,” he said, “but my wanderings have 
been fairly varied, and in my later years somewhat 
frequent. It seemed rather adventurous in my 
youth when I made excursions in the Catskills, 
camped in the Adirondacks, and visited New York 
City. I taught school a few months in the prairie 
country of Illinois, and I did some teaching in New 
Jersey. It was a notable enlargement of my horizon 
when I went to Washington to live. 

“In October, 1871, the Government sent me and 
two other Treasury Department employees to Eng- 
land to exchange a new issue of bonds for old. We 
went over on the Scotia, a side-wheeler of the Cu- 
nard line, the last of that type of vessel used by any 
of the great trans- Atlantic companies. I’ma lover of 
the sea — from the shore. That ’s as near as I care 
to get, as a rule, for I’m a poor sailor. The voyage 
was stormy, and our vessel heaved and tossed so vio- 
lently I thought she’d kick the horns off the moon. 
I fasted and kept to my bunk. 

“We delivered the new bonds to a syndicate in 
London, and received the old ones, which we burnt. 
I remember how hard we worked. We burnt millions 
of dollars’ worth of those old bonds. After the work 
was done, we were at liberty to look about awhile 


Travels at Home and Abroad 301 

before returning to America. I loitered longest in 
England, but spent a week in France, mostly in Paris, 
and had a chance to see something of Wales and 
Ireland. I enjoyed this Old World trip intensely. I 
was wild with delight the moment I set foot over 
there. Nothing I’d read had prepared me for it. 

“I made a second trip abroad for about three 
months in 1882. My wife went with me and we took 
along Julian, who was then four years old. We landed 
at Glasgow in the middle of May, and visited the 
Burns country and the Carlyle country. We saw 
Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine; went to the land 
of Wordsworth, to Stratford, to Gilbert White’s Sel- 
borne; and there were numerous other wanderings. 

“I was interested to note the difference between 
the English and the Scotch. The former don’t show 
much warmth toward strangers. You meet them, 
and they shut up like clams. But the Scotch are 
curious to know about you and your country. They 
show a great deal of studious thoughtfulness. I got 
acquainted with one family by asking a young man 
in a field a question about the birds, and in his reply 
he quoted John Burroughs to me. Then I intro- 
duced myself, and we had quite a talk, and he took 
me to his home to see the rest of the family. A few 
years later his father visited this country, and while 
here called on me. He was full of boyishness and 
eagerness to learn. He was like a bottle uncorked, 
and it was a pleasure to be with him. His enthu- 


302 John Burroughs Talks 

siasm was delightful to behold. Indeed, it was almost 
pathetic. 

“It must have been about 1879 that I made my 
first visit to Boston and went to Canada, where I saw 
medieval Quebec, and voyaged on the St. Lawrence 
and the Saguenay. The trip up the latter river is 
tremendous — a feast of the sublime. The rocks, 
which at Cape Eternity rise sheer from the water to 
a height of eighteen hundred feet, dwarfed anything 
I had hitherto seen. Another jaunt was a camping- 
trip to the woods of Maine. 

“Some ten years later I visited the Kentucky 
blue-grass region, and about the same time I made 
a trip to Niagara and journeyed as far west as the 
Mississippi. The great river was not to my eyes 
grand or impressive. It was an undignified devasta- 
tor of the earth where I made its acquaintance. To 
see the wheatfields caving off and the muddy stream 
eating up the land was really painful. 

“In middle life my farm absorbed the greater part 
of my time, and I was little inclined to stray from it. 

“A period of more frequent roaming began in 1899, 
when I visited Alaska. Three years later I voyaged 
to Jamaica, and the next year I went with President 
Roosevelt to the Yellowstone National Park. I en- 
joyed the President personally, but not the publicity 
and the long journey. There were not more than 
three days that I did n’t wish myself back at Slab- 
sides. 


Travels at Home and Abroad 303 

“Latterly I’ve been apt to go to a warmer climate 
for the winter. Once my wife and I sailed for Ber- 
muda, seeking health and pleasure. We found little 
of either, but plenty of the opposite, and came home 
depleted in purse and in physique. The long-tailed 
months don’t appeal to me. 

“I tried Florida, but it did n’t please me at all. 
In general, it is level and monotonous. The forests 
are all haggled, burned, and wasted, and the houses 
stand up on stilts as if ready to run away. 

“I’ve been down there to Edison’s winter home, 
but the first time I went to see a correspondent 
who lived on the Manatee River near Tampa. He’d 
been urging me to visit him for years. In some ways 
this man was interesting and original, but he was 
deaf as a post, smoked constantly, and insisted on 
getting close up to me and talking all the time. A 
few days were all I could stand. My pleasantest 
recollection is of the oranges which loaded the trees 
and strewed the ground in my friend’s orchard. I 
regretted I could n’t eat all the luscious fruit that 
was going to waste. 

“In 1909 I visited the Grand Canon of the 
Colorado, the Yosemite, and Hawaii. A couple of 
years later my wife and I spent a winter in California, 
and I’ve made several winter excursions into the 
South. I remember what an agreeable surprise it 
was to find the peach and plum trees in full bloom 
in Georgia the first week of March, and to hear so 


304 John Burroughs Talks 

many singing birds. But I always wanted to return 
North with the birds of my native latitude. I never 
liked to get back to my home haunts more than a 
day later than the robin.” 

Toward evening of this Sunday visit Burroughs 
and I drove to the top of Mount Holyoke.* Pe Was 
much interested in the volcanic basalt of which the 
highest ridge is formed, and in the ancient sandstone 
that buttresses it, and in the broad view from the 
summit of the alluvial valley, the winding river, and 
the long line of blue heights that rimmed the horizon. 

On Monday we visited friends at Smith College 
and had lunch with the girls at one of the dormitories. 
Later we went to Holyoke and were shown through 
a big paper-mill. Burroughs was impressed by the 
marvelous processes and the long time it must have 
taken to evolve such magic methods, but I think he 
was relieved when the tour was over and he could get 
away from the steam and odors, the turmoil and 
clatter. He pitied those who had to work in such an 
environment. 

Before we parted he went to a grocery store and 
bought a package of his special brand of breakfast- 
food to take along to the next place where he was to 
visit. 


XIX 

November , 1915 
MAKING A LIVING 

When I ^ot off the train at West Park one cool, 
breezy afternoon, Burroughs was at the station with 
a young fellow who he said used to be a newsboy and 
sold him papers. Now the youth lived in a neighbor- 
ing town and had come to visit his old friend. The 
three of us went up to Slabsides by the roundabout 
road. Burroughs’s breath failed him two or three 
times and he had to stop to rest. 

“This is nice November weather,” he remarked. 
“It’s about the season for Indian Summer, but to be 
typical of what we call Indian Summer the air ought 
to be smoky and very quiet and dreamy. 

“We are having a dry spell at present. The rain 
tries to fall, but don’t make out. I always expect 
one extreme to follow another. We had a very dry 
spring, you know, and then three months of rain. 
The streams up in Delaware County were as full 
during the summer as in March. They carried away 
haycocks, swept through the cornfields, and tore up 
the roads dreadfully.” 

When we had gone through the woods to Bur- 
roughs’s swamp, we sat for a while in his slab-sided 
cabin, and then rambled down the short-cut, with its 


306 John Burroughs Talks 

slippery strewing of fallen leaves. At the railroad 
station the ex-newsboy got on a train to go home. 

After that Burroughs and I went to the cottage 
where Julian used to live. Julian had moved away 
from Riverby, and his cottage was now the home of 
Dr. Clara Barrus. Mr. and Mrs. Burroughs had their 
meals with her. When we entered the library, we 
found that the hanging lamp there had been lighted, 
and the smoke was streaming up from the chimney 
at a great rate. That made Burroughs exclaim over 
the “carelessness” of the person who had lit the 
lamp. He seated himself in an easy -chair and, as 
he talked, sometimes leaned back in repose, some- 
times straightened up in animation, sometimes bent 
forward and doubled over with hearty laughter. He 
always laughed easily over the humor of his own ex- 
periences or fancies. The laugh was never loud nor 
long, but it was irrepressible and full of bubbling 
enjoyment. For the moment it had complete posses- 
sion of him, and his pleasure was shown at the same 
time in the relaxing of his face into an expression 
that was oddly and contagiously convivial. 

He always showed a keen interest in the news of 
the nation and the world, and his comments on po- 
litical affairs were unfailingly independent, keen, 
and racy. He could be mirthful or indignant, and 
would applaud heartily or condemn with scorching 
vigor. What he said was often wise and delightfully 
illuminating, but he might at any moment go off on 



yy 


On the Piazza at the “Nest 





The Cottage at Riverhy known as the “ Nest 


The Summer-House 




Making a Living 307 

some tangent and be amusingly naive rather than 
profound. 

Among the things of which he spoke while we sat 
there in the library was a serious sickness of his in the 
early summer. He said: “One day, after dinner, I 
picked two quarts of strawberries and brought them 
to the porch of the Doctor’s cottage and gave them to 
her. Then I collapsed. She got me onto a couch. The 
trouble was with my heart. Its action had not been 
good for some time, and the only thing that saved 
my life was Dr. Barrus’s first aid and her expert 
nursing. I did n’t leave the porch for six weeks, and 
her care was constant day and night. 

“Gradually I picked up until I was able to make 
the journey to Roxbury. There the improvement 
continued more rapidly. Last month I spent a week 
at the seashore, and I think the sea air and the sea 
food — especially the clams — had an invigorating 
effect. Now I ’m beginning to write again, but though 
I ’m getting back my health I shall have to take an 
easier gait henceforth.” 

He paused in his remarks and sniffed the air a little. 
“I still smell that lamp smoke,” he declared, and he 
got up and opened the door. “I have a very critical 
nose. I can detect bad odors about as quickly as 
anybody in the world. That’s one drawback to my 
going to the city.” 

After supper I talked with Burroughs until eight- 
thirty. Then Dr. Barrus held a lamp while he found 


308 John Burroughs Talks 

his way down the porch steps, and started off to join 
his wife in the stone house. 

The next morning, when breakfast was ready at 
seven, he came in at the back door bringing the mail 
from the post-office. He had been reading the news- 
paper and was indignant over the latest torpedoing 
of an Atlantic liner and eager to have America 
pitch into the Germans. 

When breakfast had been disposed of, we ad- 
journed to the bark-covered study and he built a 
fire. An upper sash of one of the windows had slipped 
down enough to let in the wind. He looked around 
on the fireplace mantel, saying, “I want to drive in 
a nail to hold up that sagging sash, and there’s a 
stone here somewhere that I occasionally use instead 
of a hammer.” 

But he could n’t find the stone, and he remarked 
testily: “I know what’s the matter. My wife has 
been here fixing up things. Women, when they get 
to cleaning house, beat the devil — they certainly 
do ! That stone was a complete circle — the only one 
I ever saw in my life — flattish in shape and broad 
as my hand. Confound it! she has no business to 
take my things out of here. But I suppose she said : 
‘There are plenty of stones. What’s the use of that 
in his study?’” 

After we had settled down in front of the fire I 
asked: “Won’t you tell me how you’ve fared in mak- 
ing a living?” “Did n’t you ever wish for wealth?” 


Making a Living 309 

In response he said : “I remember that when I was 
a little fellow a traveling phrenologist or mounte- 
bank came along one day to the old farm, and he 
fingered my head and said, ‘This boy is going to be 
rich.’ 

“I suppose he knew that was what my people 
would like to hear. Well, if he’d gone up the road to 
the next house he’d have found Jay Gould, who was 
then a boy of about my age on his father’s farm, and 
if he’d said the same thing of him, he’d have been 
a pretty good prophet, would n’t he? 

“Of course, we all need to have some money, but 
the secret of happiness is not to want a great deal. 
The accumulation of it ought not to be the main ob- 
ject in our lives. The most vital things can’t be bought 
or sold. We should live simply and honestly, satis- 
fied with a moderate degree of comfort and inexpen- 
sive recreation. I don’t respond readily to calls for 
lectures or magazine articles because money is a 
minor temptation. I have enough. I don’t want 
wealth — not for myself. I’d like it to give away. 
Even if I died wealthy, and in the natural course 
of things my son inherited all my property, I don’t 
think he’d be the better for it. The modest amount 
I ’m likely to leave is probably more than is good for 
him. 

“I’m not a good business man — people cheat me 
so easily! I believe what they say, and they take ad- 
vantage of me. Probably most of our writers and 


310 John Burroughs Talks 

persons of a poetic temperament are poor financiers. 
You can’t hold their minds down simply to bargaining 
and questions of profit and loss. The business world 
is an absolutely selfish world. I do many things that 
a business man would snort at and berate me well 
for. 

“I know I once sold a horse to an Irishman for one 
hundred and twenty dollars, and after he had kept 
him a year he brought him to me and wanted me to 
buy him back. The horse was as poor as a rack of 
bones, he ’d got strained some, he balked, and he was 
worth very little. But I took him and gave the man 
a hundred dollars. That was pretty close to throwing 
the money away. The man was honest and hard- 
working, and he needed a horse. This one would n’t 
do, and he had no money. He was trying to pay for 
a farm and I wanted him to succeed. 

“Besides, I felt that I had not been entirely frank 
with him. When he bought the horse I told him the 
animal was high-spirited and needed careful handling, 
but I did n’t tell him that he would n’t stand being 
whipped or overloaded, and that gentle means were 
the only ones that could be used to get good results. 
Well, I have no regrets. I don’t think a man is ever 
the worse for a kind deed. He’s better in his heart, 
however it affects his pocketbook. 

“Yet I’m not in the habit of making rash and un- 
wise bargains. I inherit a cautious streak and don’t 
go into wild scheming and the hunting for short-cuts 


Making a Living 31 1 

to fortune. I have no sympathy in the vulgar scram- 
ble for wealth we see so much of. 

“When I struck out for myself and went to teach- 
ing school at the age of seventeen, there ensued 
ten years of very hard times for me. I could n’t 
seem to get on my feet — could n’t make a living 
for myself and my wife. I did n’t earn much teach- 
ing, and my efforts to make money in other ways 
failed utterly. 

“At the end of the ten years I became a Govern- 
ment clerk in Washington, and things began to mend. 
I have prospered in a moderate way ever since. My 
income has n’t been large, but I have spent less than 
I earned. Before I gave up my Washington position 
I owned a home there, and when I settled beside the 
Hudson I soon paid for my farm and a substantial 
house. Later I bought adjoining land and doubled 
the farm acreage. 

“ My wife was greatly opposed to this investment. 
She was sure I could n’t handle so large a place; and 
she is much better at business than I am. The man 
who can cheat her must be a clever fellow. She knows 
just what meat, dry goods, groceries, and all those 
things ought to cost, and an overcharge of two cents 
she will no more bear than an overcharge of two 
hundred dollars. She’s an economical housekeeper 
down to the smallest details. Yes, and she can give 
me points on trading any time. But I have n’t much 
fancy for stewing and quarreling over small amounts. 


312 John Burroughs Talks 

I think a woman’s business genius is apt to run to 
that sort of thing. 

“ Naturally, it was easier for me to keep the balance 
on the right side of the ledger in making a living 
because I had only one child. I’ve always wished I 
had half a dozen; and yet if that would have meant a 
dull grind of poverty and no leisure for loitering with 
nature or for writing, and perhaps the missing of 
Whitman and other friends, I don’t know that I ’d be 
willing to make such a sacrifice. 

“Without some degree of freedom from business 
worry and unceasing manual labor I could n’t do my 
best in absorbing impressions or reporting them. I 
have no desire to exert myself continuously in farm- 
ing or anything else. One of my Riverby neighbors 
is a man who’s on the jump looking after his affairs 
from morn till night. He has n’t a lazy bone in his 
body, but I have lots of ’em. I’m not a persistent 
worker, and haste and I don’t agree. 

“For many years the income from my writings 
was very small, and I was chiefly dependent on such 
salaries as I received and the profits of my farming. 
When a hailstorm nearly ruined my grapes one year, 
I felt quite overwhelmed and was glad to pick up a 
little extra money lecturing. I even started on a lec- 
ture tour. I’d talk about nature without depending 
on either manuscript or notes. Once, in the middle 
of a lecture, I thought I’d got to the end of my 
tether. What I was going to say next I did n’t know, 


Making a Living 313 

when a great moth flew in at a window. So I talked 
about that and went smoothly on again. I did n't 
encounter any very formidable difficulty in this 
lecturing job until I appeared before a Dutch audi- 
ence in Pennsylvania. There those people sat, stolid 
and unmoved from start to finish. It was more than 
I could stand, and I brought my lecture tour to an 
abrupt termination. 

“I rarely ever say anything about price when I’m 
selling an editor an essay I’ve written. I take what- 
ever is offered me, and that is the end of the matter. 
Once a syndicate asked me to write a two-thousand 
word article on ‘ The Birth of Summer ’ for thirty 
dollars, and I did. The price satisfied me well enough, 
but when I chanced to tell Mr. Howells of the trans- 
action he said two hundred dollars was nearer the 
right price. The ‘Century’ paid me best — so well, 
in fact, that I was always astonished at the checks 
I received and felt as if I ought to send back part. 
One leading magazine was apt to trim, and to fall 
short of living up to its agreements. I’d make them 
come to terms, but there was left such an unpleasant 
impression in my mind that I quit writing for it. 

“What is now Houghton Mifflin Company have 
published my books. The sales were small for a 
good many years, and as a consequence my income 
from royalties was small likewise. But there was a 
gradual trend upward, and after a while the firm be- 
gan paying me an annuity in quarterly installments, 


314 John Burroughs Talks 

plus a royalty on the first eight months’ sales of each 
new book. 

“At times I thought of taking a book manuscript 
to some other firm but always was persuaded not to. 
Mr. Houghton said a publisher and an author were 
like man and wife and should n’t be separated. I 
could n’t quite see the analogy. If he was the man, 
I had only one husband, but he had a whole harem 
of authors. 

“Julian graduated from Harvard with honors in 
1901, and I wanted him to come and live at Riverby, 
but his mother thought his education would be 
thrown away if he did that. She said that he ought to 
go into something to make money, else what good 
did his education do him? She could n’t see that 
education is a valuable thing for its own sake, and 
that the trained mind should be able to get far more 
satisfaction out of ploughing and other rustic work 
than a poor ignorant clodhopper would. 

“Well, Julian came back home, and the next year 
he married and built a cottage near my study. I 
greatly enjoyed helping with the house-building. 
The annuity from my publishers was increased from 
time to time and about 1905 I decided to turn over 
my farm, rent free, to Julian. I had six thousand 
dollars in the bank. I was selling some magazine 
articles, and apparently would have an income of 
about twenty-three hundred dollars, which was 
enough for my wife and me to live on. Things were 


Making a Living 315 

adjusted nicely, I thought, and the prospects seemed 
rather rosy, but the prices our grapes brought went 
steadily down and the farm expenses kept going up. 
California grapes took the cream off the market, and 
we were n’t getting half what I got twenty years 
before. Also the express companies and middlemen 
apparently had a habit of absorbing more than their 
share in handling farm produce. For instance, it 
would have paid to ship apples from the Catskills, 
even if the growers did n’t net more than fifty cents 
a bushel, but the farmers did n’t dare ship ’em be- 
cause they were afraid they’d get in debt. It has 
often happened that a man has shipped produce to 
a commission merchant and not only received no pay, 
but was sent a bill for express. 

“What Julian could get out of the Riverby place 
dwindled, and at length he moved away to become 
the manager of a millionaire’s farm in the neighbor- 
hood. He has sometimes said that he wished I 
had n’t persuaded him to stay at home instead of 
going out into the world to make a place for himself 
as I had done. 

“We pulled up half my vineyards after he left, 
and have managed things in a sort of makeshift fash- 
ion ever since with the hired man in charge. There ’s 
no profit. The place barely pays for itself. But in a 
financial way, taking things as a whole, I’ve fared 
well enough. When my publishers made their last in- 
crease in my annuity, that and other receipts gave 


316 John Burroughs Talks 

me a total income of about thirty-five hundred 
dollars, and I did n’t spend it all by considerable. 

“I congratulate myself that no member of my own 
household is lacking in thrift or has had a prolonged 
and severe illness to tax my resources. I’ve been able 
to help certain of my relations in time of need, and 
also some of my neighbors, and to contribute to oc- 
casional charities. Besides, I’ve traveled somewhat 
freely, and in my later years, have gone to a warmer 
climate for the winter when I chose. I had an early 
period of hardship, but in the main I’ve made a living 
that has satisfied me, and have done so without un- 
due exertion or any serious sacrifice.” 


XX 

October, 1917 
EDISON AND FORD 

It was shortly before six of a mild, quiet morning 
that I walked from the West Park railroad station 
over to Riverby. For a while I sat in the little sum- 
mer-house looking off over the river and to the 
shore beyond veiled in delicate blue haze. Up the 
slope behind me was the barn, and by and by I saw 
the Riverby hired man plodding from it to the well 
for water. I joined him, and he said: “Mr. Bur- 
roughs was expecting you yesterday. He went to 
the train early in the afternoon and again in the 
evening to meet you. You’ll find him at the Doctor’s 
cottage. He ’s always up by six o’clock. Dr. Barrus is 
away for a few days and he’s alone there at present.” 

I went to the back door and rapped, and he wel- 
comed me into the kitchen, where he was preparing 
breakfast. He looked well and seemed active and 
cheerful and as alert mentally as ever. He fried 
bacon, and he warmed in the oven some puffed wheat, 
which he had recently adopted as his breakfast-food. 
The oven was hotter than he thought, and when he 
opened the door to take out the cereal a scorched 
odor warned him that all was not right. He snatched 
out the plate of puffed wheat with a lively exclama- 


318 John Burroughs Talks 

tion of disgust and slid the blackened, smoking mess 
off into the fire. Soon he toasted another lot, and 
we sat down at a small table there in the kitchen and 
ate. 

“I’m no housekeeper,” he affirmed, but I had 
never known him to fail to make the food he served 
palatable, in spite of accidents due to his thoughts 
straying elsewhere, and he always did the dish-wash- 
ing and tidying-up promptly after a meal. In fact, 
for a man and a famous author, and a conversa- 
tionalist of rare breadth of interests and imagination 
and loquacity, he succeeded notably well in his activ- 
ities as cook and maid-of-all-work. 

When he had finished the kitchen tasks we went 
to the post-office for his mail. On our return we made 
ourselves comfortable before an open fire in the bark- 
covered study, and he read aloud much of the war 
news in his New York daily and discussed that and 
many another thing. Besides he told me a little of 
what had happened in his own realm since we had 
met. 

“Early last year,” he said, “my wife and I went to 
Washington and were taken sick there. Then we con- 
cluded to go down to Georgia, but our diseases took 
the same train. We got worse instead of better, and 
came back home. I fully recovered in a few weeks, 
but my wife steadily failed. Her ailment was old 
age — a general breaking down. She died early in 
March after a year of suffering. I helped take care 


Edison and Ford 319 

of her here at West Park much of the time. But 
toward the last I could n’t sleep and had to get away. 
I did n’t want to be with her at the end. Now the 
house up the hill that we built for ourselves when we 
were young is empty. We lived there together forty- 
three years, and it rather distresses me to look at the 
old vacant dead home. I would n’t have thought I 
could miss her so much. Well, I too will pass on soon. 

“I barely missed ending my days last spring. 
My Ford overturned up here on our fine macadam 
road and came down on top of me. It broke the bone 
in my arm close to my shoulder. The weight of the 
car pressed against my chest, and I could n’t speak. 
Some workmen were passing along the road near at 
hand, and they hurried to lift off the car. Their 
prompt help was all that saved me. It was very fortu- 
nate, too, that the car was no heavier. If you are go- 
ing to be wrecked in an automobile choose a Ford 
every time. 

“The doctors said I’d never get the use of my arm 
again, but the bone has knitted, and I did n’t need 
to carry my arm in a sling any longer than a much 
younger man would have. The arm is almost as good 
as new now. 

“For some time before the accident Ford had been 
urging me to accept another car. But I told him that 
discarding the old car while it was so good would be 
sheer waste. I don’t like to throw away anything. 
However, the old car got badly bunged up in the 


320 John Burroughs Talks 

overturn. Ford wanted me to have a sedan, but that 
was too fine for me, and I would n’t take anything 
better than the ordinary type of car to which I was 
accustomed. 

“I’m being pretty careful of my health. A sick- 
ness with me is apt to begin with a cold in the head. 
I sneeze and cough and blow, and if I consult a doc- 
tor he says he will give me something for my throat. 

“But I tell him, ‘I don’t want it for that.’ 

“The cold is just a symptom — a warning red 
flag. To go and pull down the red flag does n’t do any 
good. There’s half a dozen of these red flags I’m 
onto. That sickness I had a few years ago has made 
me thoroughly awake \o the need of watchfulness. 
I gad! they said my heart almost stopped. Again 
and again the demon pursuing me nearly gets his 
hand on me, but so far I’ve been able to shake him 
off. 

“1 was invited to the Howells eightieth-birthday 
dinner in New York. But I did n’t go. In the first 
place I can’t eat at night. ’T would make me sick. 
In the second place I’ll be hanged if I’ll pay three 
dollars for a dinner in these times. I won’t pay five 
dollars for a room either. Half that amount is my 
limit.” 

Mrs. Burroughs was buried with her own people 
at Tongore. The site of her native village is now 
covered by the waters of the Ashokan reservoir, but 


321 


Edison and Ford 

the bodies in the local cemetery were transferred 
a few miles to Tongore, which is on higher ground. 
It was there that Burroughs began teaching, and the 
little red schoolhouse of his time was not superseded 
until 1920. The place is a forlorn, shapeless hamlet 
on low, hilly land, with high mountains lying to the 
west but not near enough to relieve the monotony. 

Two of Burroughs’s most valued friends in his 
later life were Edison and Ford. He often spoke of 
them, and always with appreciation, but of course 
with some comments on their characteristics that 
showed he thought them quite human in falling short 
of perfection. 

“I first met Edison,” he said, “about 1905 at 
Orange, New Jersey. He’s a hard man to talk with, 
he’s so deaf. You have to get up close to his ear and 
howl into it. His voice is crude and commonplace 
like that of all deaf people. If you happen to touch 
the right string, and the company suits him, he talks 
freely, with wisdom and humor. 

“I asked Mrs. Edison one day if he ran his own 
automobile. She laughed at the idea. His mind 
wanders too far afield for him to safely take the re- 
sponsibility. Besides, he has n’t manual dexterity. 
He works with his head, and his assistants do the 
rest. There is a curious vacancy about the look of his 
hands. 

“One winter I was two weeks with him down in 
Florida at a place he has there on the west coast. 


322 John Burroughs Talks 

His establishment consists of three houses in a grove 
of tropical trees, and it’s very comfortable and even 
luxurious. The place is on the banks of a shallow 
river that comes from the Everglades, and a long 
wharf runs out into the stream. Edison is a great 
man for fishing. Every day he’s out in a launch or 
a rowboat trolling for fish, or he sits on the end of the 
wharf with his line in the water. At the same time 
he’s fishing in his mind for ideas, and he’s very sure 
to get a bite at one end of the line or the other — 
sometimes both. He ponders on all sorts of things 
in heaven and on earth. His mind is very speculative, 
yet very practical. In the varied and exact knowl- 
edge that his head contains he ’s like a cyclopaedia. 

“He enjoys the woods and country, but it is his 
laboratory that he loves best. He hates to leave it 
and get away from the smell of chemicals and the 
hum of wheels. 

“I understand that he’s able to get along with a 
ridiculously small amount of sleep. Often he’s up all 
night and tires out his helpers, but he always takes 
a nap in the daytime. 

“A while ago he was awarded a Carnegie medal, 
and there was a big blow-out in New York to present 
it. His wife had hard work to get him over to the 
affair. They could n’t induce him to speak. He’s a 
man of deeds and not of words. ‘Oh, this everlasting 
palaver!’ he grumbled. ‘We run too much to talk in 
this country. I want to be with men who do things/ 


Edison and Ford 323 

He was disgusted with all that nonsense going on 
over him. 

“Once a friend asked to be allowed to bring a mind- 
reader to see him. 

“‘He can come/ Edison said, ‘but he can’t hum- 
bug me/ 

“The mind-reader came, and Edison wrote on a 
slip of paper a chemical formula known only to 
himself. To his amazement the mind-reader told 
him what it was. Then Edison wrote the name 
of his first teacher, and the mind-reader gave the 
name correctly. Edison explained to me that there 
must have been something that went from his brain 
to the mind-reader’s brain, just like bees from a 
hive. 

“Once he and I spent a few days at the summer 
place of Colgate, the wealthy soap-manufacturer, and 
he ridiculed the way I ate — told me I ate three 
times too much. 

“So I said, ‘While we are here I’m going to keep 
pace with you in this food business/ 

“That evening we sat down to dine. The Colgates 
had a good cook and there was a nice dinner. The 
soup was served, but Edison said to me, ‘You don’t 
want any slop like that.’ 

“We refused it, and also the fish course. Mean- 
while we nibbled toasted pieces of whole- wheat bread. 
Some chicken was brought in. I followed Edison’s 
example in dipping the gravy onto the toast and we 


324 John Burroughs Talks 

had a helping of creamed potatoes, but we took none 
of the meat. Squash was offered to us, but he said: 
‘ Don’t eat squash. Nothing which slips down as easy 
as that does you any good.’ 

“The ice-cream and pudding that came later 
did n’t tempt him. Water was his drink, ‘feat 
plenty of toast with a lot of butter on it/ he said. 
‘ In that combination alone you have all the elements 
of a complete food, and it compels chewing/ 

“He smoked a cigar after dinner. I drew the line 
at that for myself. ‘Oh! you need n’t scowl,’ he said. 
‘I’m so good in most other things that I’m going to 
allow myself this one indulgence/ 

“While we were at Colgate’s he would take no 
meat at breakfast, though he said: ‘I sometimes eat 
a mutton chop at home. But there I am at work. 
Here I ’m not doing anything and don’t need so much 
nutriment/ 

“However, he drank a cup of coffee. ‘ That pushes 
you along half a day/ I told him. I did without it. 

“He would n’t eat fruit or anything else that 
had n’t been subjected to a heat of 212 degrees. He 
has microphobia and is a crank on the food subject. 
But he has a big body and thrives on his spare diet. 
Probably he does n’t need half as much food as the 
average person because he does n’t take any exercise. 
He is n’t entirely free from trouble with his stomach 
either. One reason for that is a way he has of eating, 
in a fit of abstraction, whatever happens to be at 


Edison and Ford , , 325 

hand. The result is that his stomach is left in the 
lurch. He ’d forget to eat at all if his wife did n’t 
shove the things up in front of him. 

“When I got home after three days of his fare 
at the Colgates’, I was so hungry that I was in a 
tremble all over. 

“One day I got a letter from the man at the head 
of Henry Ford’s advertising department saying that 
Mr. Ford had read my books and they had given him 
a great deal of pleasure, and he wanted to make 
me a present of a Ford car. I did n’t know what in 
the dickens to think of such an offer, and I talked 
it over with my friends. They advised me to take 
the car, and I wrote back, ‘If it would please Mr. 
Ford to present me with one of his cars, it would 
please me to accept the car.’ 

“So on the first day of the New Year, 1913, lo and 
behold ! a Ford automobile came on a train, and with 
it arrived a man who arranged to have it kept in a 
garage at Poughkeepsie, where my wife was staying 
that winter. The garage was to attend to any repairs 
that were necessary from time to time at Ford’s 
expense, and a chauffeur was engaged, likewise at 
Ford’s expense, to take me out in the auto and show 
me how to drive it. 

“Once, after I’d begun to run it alone, I came to 
grief, repairs had to be made, and I gave the neighbor 
who housed the car a check to cover the cost; but he 


326 John Burroughs Talks 

let Ford know, and Ford had the check sent back 
to me. 

“That very June, Ford wanted me to come out to 
Detroit, and I went. I found him an earnest, big- 
hearted, ordinary man whom I liked at first sight. 
His personality was very attractive. He’d never 
lost the simplicity of his early plain living on the 
farm. That’s the place for big men to start, and 
Ford was the real thing, a man of sterling quality. 
He was a mighty good talker in his own field, but 
crude in his philosophy. His philosophic ideas were 
those of a man who’d turned his attention in that 
direction late in life. Sometimes I thought he was 
a Christian Scientist, and sometimes I thought he 
was not. 

“It seemed that by chance he had read one of my 
books and enjoyed it so much that his wife bought 
him a full set. She said the books had quite a marked 
effect on his attitude of mind. They started new 
currents in him that have stuck by him ever since, 
and he was no longer utterly absorbed in his car. 

“I strolled in the woods with him and stayed at 
his bungalow and we walked through his factory. I 
could hardly believe in the magnitude of his product 
until I saw the completed cars coming out one a 
minute. While we stood looking at the cars as they 
rolled forth, he pointed to one which was a little finer 
in its fixings than the others and said, ‘That is for 
you.’ 


Edison and Ford 327 

“‘Why, you have given me one already!’ I said. 

“‘But that won’t last forever,’ he told me. ‘You 
need another. It’s nothing to me — just a little 
money — and what does that amount to? Giving 
away a car is no more to me than giving away a jack- 
knife would be to most men.’ 

“Well, I suppose that’s so. He planked down two 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars to start a hospital 
out there in Detroit. The new car came to Riverby 
and I let Julian use it. For some reason or other it 
proved to be a kicker. One day, when he was crank- 
ing it, the handle flew back and broke his forearm — 
broke both bones square off. It kicked at him again 
the other day. It’s like a kicking horse. The habit 
is one that neither a horse nor an automobile ever 
gets over. 

“But my car hasn’t raised a hoof. Lately Ford 
has had a self-starter sent up from New York and put 
on it, and a new steel radiator. He’s done lots of 
things for me. When I thank him, he says: ‘Oh, 
that’s nothing to me! What’s the use of mentioning 
it?’ He’s just that generous. 

“One time I was telling him about a friend of mine 
in Georgia who is employed by the State in the Agri- 
cultural Department. He travels around the country 
and does a great deal of good. ‘I wonder if he 
would n’t like a car,’ Ford said, and he sent him 
one. 

“While we were on a trip to Massachusetts once. 


328 John Burroughs Talks 

a heavy thunder-storm passed over the region we 
were in. The next morning we came through a piece 
of woods out into an open, and there were the smok- 
ing ruins of a farmhouse that had been struck by 
lightning. An old man and woman sat in chairs under 
a tree. Ford stopped, got out of his car, asked about 
the disaster, and learned that the old couple were the 
owners of the destroyed dwelling. Then he fumbled 
in his pocket and took out a hundred-dollar bill and 
gave it to them. He inquired how many there were 
in the family, and they spoke of a granddaughter who 
had intended to go to the high school in the fall, but 
now could n’t because her good clothes were all 
burned. Ford took out another hundred-dollar bill 
and gave it to them to make good the girl’s loss. 
They hesitated to accept so much, but he said: 
‘Never mind. What do I want of the money? I’ve 
got plenty more.’ And the tears ran down their faces 
as they thanked him. 

“Edison and he are warm friends. He ’s the more 
practical business man of the two. Edison is like 
Agassiz, who said, ‘ I can’t afford to make money/ 

“Once a clique of capitalists had a trap fixed to 
get control of Edison through his need of ready cash. 
Ford met Edison about that time and learned of the 
situation. ‘How much money do you need to get you 
out of this hole?’ Ford asked. 

“Edison told him. The amount was enormous, 
but Ford immediately wrote a check for the sum 


Edison and Ford 329 

named and handed it to his friend, saying, ‘I can’t 
let you fall into the hands of those fellows.’ 

“I never heard any one else abuse the capitalists 
as he does. He howls against them as bad as any 
anarchist. Yes, he pitches into the whole banking 
fraternity, though it is with the banks that he leaves 
his surplus money. He does n’t invest in stocks and 
bonds, for he won’t put his money where the capi- 
talists could wield it as a weapon. 

“Ford is the cleverest man with his hands that I 
ever saw. One day, when he was out with a party of 
us, we found an apple, and he got an axe at the side 
of a barn and divided the apple with the greatest 
deftness into equal pieces, one for each of us. 

“Once, when he was at Riverby, he observed that 
one of the clocks did n’t work right. That led to 
his informing us that he began his career clock and 
watch repairing, and he tackled the clock and soon 
got it to behaving properly. 

“We had a box set up for the wrens to nest in, but 
the English sparrows invaded it. ‘I’ll fix that bird- 
box,’ Ford said, and he did it so neatly that, when 
he finished, the box admitted the wrens, but the 
sparrows could n’t get in at all. They tried it and 
then scolded us for the rest of the day. 

“I remember a time when we’d stopped at a hotel 
on one of the trips we made, and he strolled off 
across the fields to where a man was sawing wood 
with a gasoline engine. The man told Ford of certain 


330 John Burroughs Talks 

things the engine would n’t do, and Ford looked it 
over and quickly found and remedied the trouble. 

“Osborne, who made a reputation for efficiency 
in handling the prisoners at Sing Sing, got Ford and 
me to come there to see them. We watched them 
marching in squads into the dining-room to the 
sound of music — eighteen hundred of them. After 
they were through eating, Osborne escorted us to a 
raised platform and made a little speech, which he 
ended by saying, ‘I want you to know who these 
men with me are.’ 

“They’d heard of Ford and cheered him heartily. 
The applause I received was decidedly milder. Os- 
borne called on Ford to address them. Ford was 
perfectly helpless. He got up and made some such 
remarks as ‘Boys, I’m glad to see you here. I’ve 
never made a speech in my life -and never expect to.’ 
Then he sat down looking kind of sheepish and 
ashamed. 

“But the problem they presented made its im- 
press on him. He said to me, ‘I could take a lot of 
these men and make good citizens out of them by 
giving them a show and square deal.’ 

“Perhaps he could, though I should say that 
eighty per cent of them were perfectly hopeless. 
They had vacant faces and big jaws and looked stolid. 
One of the three head men in Ford’s factory was a 
jailbird a few years ago. Ford had brought out the 
man in him. Yes, Ford’s heart is in the right place. 


Edison and Ford 331 

and his head ’s all right too. He’s an optimist. He 
has a sweet nature, and nobody who’s personally 
acquainted with him can help liking him. 

“I would give Ford credit for benevolence in 
paying his men five dollars a day and letting them 
share in the profits. But he says it was simply a 
good business move. It gives him the pick of the 
workers in the labor market. The business is theirs 
as well as his, and they are stimulated to do their 
best. Apparently the men were doing all they pos- 
sibly could before. They thought so, but with the 
lift in remuneration they at once showed increased 
effectiveness. > * ■ * 

“One winter day, when I was a boy, old Nat 
Higby came riding along on his horse. He was a 
long-legged, big-footed man of a type that seems to 
have disappeared now. He stopped and pointed to 
a fox which was being followed by hounds on a dis- 
tant hillside. ‘That fox is running just as fast as it 
can,’ he said, ‘but if you were to jump out from be- 
hind the rock just above it and holler “Boo!” it 
would go faster still.’ 

“Ford’s men were doing their best, but when he ap- 
plied the right stimulus they did better than their best. 

“There was a letter in my mail this morning from 
a man who wanted me to get him a place with Ford. 
But I ain’t going to ask any such favors. I don’t 
know how many people have been after me that way. 
On an average I get such a letter every week. 


332 John Burroughs Talks 

“When I first began to run my car I was afraid of 
the thing. An automobile is the same as a horse — 
if you are afraid of it it’ll play you a trick every 
time, and I’ve had several rather startling experi- 
ences with mine. When I’m up in the Catskills at 
Woodchuck Lodge, I keep the car in an old barn 
and have to run it up a steep rise to get in the 
door. I was always timid about that on account of 
the power I had to use and the necessity of shutting 
it off promptly. I said to myself, ‘If you lose con- 
trol you ’ll smash right through the other side of the 
barn, where there’s a fall of fifteen feet down onto 
some rocks — and there you’ll be!’ 

“I woke up one night and decided to get a rope 
and stretch it across the back of the barn floor to 
bring my car to a stop if I failed to stop it myself. 
Morning came, but I did n’t put the rope up, and 
that very day I took my car out for a ride. When I 
came back and started to go into the barn I was 
scared. Chauncey, my nephew, was looking on, and 
he said I went into the barn as if the devil was after 
me. I crashed through the boards at the back, and 
the front wheels went over the sill, but (something 
underneath the car caught on the edge of the sill 
so the car did n’t quite tip. Only for that I’d have 
been in eternity. 

“My friends lifted their voices in a chorus, de- 
claring that I should n’t run the car any more. I 
promised I would n’t, and a young fellow who was 


333 


Edison and Ford 

living with us acted as chauffeur the rest of the 
season. But in the winter I was down in Georgia 
visiting a man who had a Ford, and I got to running 
it on the level roads there and lost my old fear. 

“Once, when Ford was out with me in my own car, 
he said: ‘There are two things you mustn’t do. 
You must n’t go fast in ticklish places, and you 
must n’t take your hands off the steering-wheel to 
point/ 

“Now, if I have a little bit of an anxious feeling 
on the road, I say, ‘Go slow,’ and I keep my head. 

“And yet only two nights ago my discretion failed 
me. I was out with the car, and as I approached a 
sharp turn in the road I saw two men coming. That 
seemed to hypnotize me. I was so afraid of running 
into them that I turned out till I gave them eight 
feet leeway. I could see nothing and think of nothing 
but those two men. The result was that I took the 
bark off from a roadside tree, and my engine stopped. 

“‘Did n’t you think we knew enough to keep out 
of your way?’ the men asked. 

“‘Yes, of course I did,’ I answered. 

“Oh dear! ha, ha! The root of that sort of trouble 
lies in the subjective self. It’s a curious psycho- 
logical problem. But I’ve had my lesson, and I 
won’t get caught that way again. 

“ I enjoy riding in my car, and am benefited by it 
if I don’t attempt too much. Twenty miles on a 
good road exhilarates me. But last summer Julian 


334 John Burroughs Talks 

and I went in my Ford from Roxbury to the Massa- 
chusetts coast in two days. Julian drove like Jehu, 
and the long hours of rapid traveling were too stimu- 
lating for me. I did n’t sleep well at night. It was as 
if I ’d drank too much tea. 

“Ford has a big heart, but his head is not so large 
except in his own line. He ’s not a reader. He does n’t 
even read much in the newspapers, aside from the 
headlines. I’ve told him he ought at least to know 
the main events in the history of his own nation and 
of Europe. But he retorted that the men who brought 
on the great war knew history all right, and yet that 
did n’t prevent their fighting. 

“One day I was telling him what a great book I 
thought the Bible was — what noble literature; and 
he said, ‘ I have n’t read it much, but I tell you what 
I think — Emerson’s books and Thoreau’s and yours 
will be read after the Bible is forgotten.’ ^ 

“I laughed at him. I don’t know when he reads 
my books, but Mrs. Ford has told me that he does. 
‘I can dip into them anywhere,’ he says, ‘and get 
interested at once. Nevertheless, sometimes I think 
you could say what you say with less words.’ 

“ Well, he’s genuine and I like the man. Mentally 
he’s not the equal of Edison, who’s a philosopher. 
A great mind that man has. You can’t fool him. He 
never would have undertaken such a thing as Ford’s 
peace mission. What Ford wanted was to ‘get the 
boys out of the trenches by Christmas.’ That phrase 


Edison and Ford 335 

haunted him. It was just the goodness of his heart 
that prompted him and led him astray. He did n’t 
know those infernal Germans. He invited me to go 
over to Europe on his Peace Ship. I would have gone 
if I’d felt well, and I did go down to New York to 
see him off. 

“President Wilson evidently values him and is apt 
to have him to dinner at the White House when Ford 
is in Washington. 

“Ford has built a new house in recent years near 
Detroit. It cost a good many hundreds of thousands 
of dollars. He would gladly have lived on in his 
simple old home, but I think his wife wanted a larger 
establishment. I go there to visit them once in a 
while. The rooms have everything in them under the 
sun that a man could want. 

“When Ford has spent a day at the factory, he 
comes home quite fagged out. His staff is always 
saving up questions for him to decide. However, he 
recovers quickly from his fatigue. All he needs is a 
night’s rest. He sleeps well, and he digests his food 
well, though he’s a sort of haphazard eater in a light 
way. He has no rheumatism nor pains, is lean and 
limber and wonderfully active. If we’re out walking, 
he ’ll sometimes start off as fast as he can go for a run 
into the woods and back. 

“I’ll say to him: ‘You’ve reached an age when 
that sort of thing is n’t good for you. You must n’t 
start so suddenly. Don’t start in high. Start in low.’ 


336 John Burroughs Talks 

“I’ve induced him to adopt my habit of lying 
down in the middle of the day after dinner for a nap, 
and he agrees that he is better for it. 

“Once I made a voyage to Cuba with him on 
his yacht. Crew and servants together numbered 
twenty-eight men. There were a cook and a steward, 
and they’d concoct the Lord only knows what for 
us to eat. Ford does n’t care for such extras, and he’s 
wise; but it was a long time before he finally got it 
through the heads of the cook and steward that we 
did n’t want all those fancy rich dishes. He had it 
his own way at last, though I suspect that the men 
felt as if they were n’t earning their wages. 

“While we were in Cuba, Ford had a fancy that 
he’d like to buy a big sugar plantation he saw. 
The price was three million dollars. The plantation 
ploughing was being done with oxen, six yoke to a 
plough, and all the methods of work were slow and 
antiquated. Ford wanted to use tractors and show 
what could be done with other labor-saving devices 
and efficient management. But his wife vetoed the 
project. She did n’t want him to take on the added 
responsibility. It could n’t help but prey on his time 
and be a car^ he ought not to be burdened with. 

“His personal expenses must be pretty heavy in 
spite of his simple tastes. I was at Boston with him 
a while ago. There was a little party of us, and our 
suite of rooms at the hotel cost forty dollars a day. 

“I made an auto trip with Ford and Edison re- 


Edison and Ford 337 

cently to West Virginia and North Carolina. Ford 
was as active physically as ever. His views outside 
his own sphere used to be childish, but they’ve be- 
come broader. 

“Ford was considering being a candidate for the 
Senate, and Edison said to him: ‘What do you want 
to do that for? You can’t speak. You would n’t 
say a damned word. You’d be mum.’ 

“Ford told Edison to go to the Senate too, but 
Edison said: ‘I’m too deaf. I couldn’t hear any- 
thing. But if I did go I ’d try to repeal all the patent 
laws. They ’ve never done me any good or any other 
inventor.’ 

“‘That’s so,’ Ford agreed. ‘The profits in inven- 
tions go to the manufacturers.’ 

“Ford keeps track of me and every little while 
inquires, or has his secretary find out, how I am. If 
anything is wrong, he gets busy to see that I have the 
best of care. When my wife and I were visiting in 
Washington, he had a car sent from his agency there 
to our stopping-place every day with a man to take 
us to ride, and we could use it as much as we pleased, 
Yes, Ford is one of my devoted friends, really.” 


XXI 

November , 1918 

THE WORLD WAR 

I reached Riverby at dusk of a chill, windy, half- 
clouded day toward the end of November and found 
Burroughs in his bark-covered study sitting medita- 
ting in the gloom that was somewhat mitigated by 
the lively glow of the open fire. He was thinner than 
I had seen him before — weighed only one hundred 
and thirty pounds — and he was not so vigorous 
physically, though essentially sound in body and 
mind. 

“I’ve sawed and split wood for my fire to-day,” 
he said, “but I have to be careful not to over-exert. 
I ’m sleeping remarkably well — perhaps because of 
a new food I’m using. A New York doctor recom- 
mended it to me. It ’s a very palatable and nutritive 
soup made from veal knucklebone. I have the soup 
every day for supper. I’m in the habit of drinking 
a cup of hot water just before going to bed and the 
first thing when I get up, and that’s good for me. 
Our West Park water is rather poor and I use water 
from the Catskills for drinking purposes. 

“ I Ve been out to Toledo recently to review a 
crowd of forty thousand school-children at the un- 
veiling of a statue of me, but I did n’t enjoy the 


The World War 339 

occasion, although I felt grateful for what every- 
body did to make things pleasant for me. 

“I intend to spend the winter at West Park. 
Every time I go South I’m sick, and I’ve concluded 
it would be unwise for me to go there again. I’d 
enjoy spending the cold months in California, but 
the journey is too long. I don’t like winter. 

“Walking tires me now. Two or three miles is 
exhausting. What I wish I had is a donkey that 
would carry me around in a safe and leisurely way 
on the local lanes and paths — a donkey like the 
one I rode at the Grand Canon.” 

We talked most of the World War which the ar- 
mistice had brought to an end that very month. 

In the fall of 1915 Burroughs had said: “The war 
has stirred me intensely, ever since it began last year. 
At first I spent a great deal of time reading the 
papers. I’d read several of them each day, and not 
let anything escape me that they printed about the 
war. But doing this disturbed me mentally. I was 
injuring my health. So I curtailed my newspaper- 
reading, but continued to devour magazine war 
articles and war books. 

“I’m not satisfied with the part our country has 
played in the upheaval. President Wilson is a con- 
servative man — a scholar and a coiner of phrases. 
I get impatient with him. I’ve often wished that 
Roosevelt was in his place to deal with the Germans 


340 John Burroughs Talks 

in their madness. Roosevelt would have showed his 
teeth some and brought them to terms. But I don’t 
think he’d have been precipitate in involving this 
country in the war. He ain’t a fool. 

“The final upshot of the conflict will be to put an 
end to war. We are bound to abandon the folly of 
settling differences between nations by a barbarous 
trial of strength. War has become too horrible, and 
modern weapons are too tremendously destructive. 
This slaughtering of young men by the million, this 
hell turned loose on the earth, will kill the military 
spirit, I hope. The lesson will be burned into the very 
souls of the fighting nations. Think how such a war 
drains off the national wealth — the great reservoirs 
of accumulated riches — and what a check it must 
be to have so many of the bravest, most vigorous 
men killed. 

“The war is no doubt a disappointment to the 
Germans. I think they would give anything to get 
back to where they were before it started. Oh, yes! 
their plans miscarried. England upset their plans 
completely. 

“The Germans hate England because she won’t 
give up what she has got; and I tell you she’ll 
fight long and hard before she does give up the pos- 
sessions she has acquired. England is at home on the 
sea. She knows how to manage ships. Wherever 
her flag has gone it has carried justice and liberty 
and the spirit of fair play. That ’s where England is 


341 


The World War 

so wise. The Germans thought the British Empire 
would break up, but everywhere was loyalty. They 
thought we would take Canada. They were fools to 
so misread the world. Lord! Canada would fight us 
tooth and nail before she ’d let us annex her. 

“Government in Germany is in many respects ad- 
mirable, but the way it curtails personal liberty and 
muzzles the press is unbearable. Worst of all is the 
insolence of its military. The men in the army can 
commit almost any misdemeanor in their treatment 
of the civil population and go unpunished. The Gov- 
ernment position is that the military can do no 
wrong. We can learn much from Germany, but we 
don’t want Germanism stuffed down our throats. 
You hardly dare blow your nose in the street over 
there; and you can’t hang a washcloth out of a win- 
dow to dry without being called to account for it. 
I never want to set foot in their cursed country if 
that’s the way they manage. 

“I’m thankful that a good many tens of thou- 
sands of their soldiers have been killed and will no 
longer menace us. How like the devil they have 
fought, and what an unlimited supply of men Ger- 
many apparently has to sacrifice! It seems as if the 
rocks and trees had turned to men. 

“A while ago two letters that I wrote about the 
war were published in the ‘New York Tribune.’ 
They evidently hit the mark; for I got a good many 
replies. Some of the professors over in Germany 


342 John Burroughs Talks 

wrote to tell me that I was misinformed and did not 
understand the real situation; and I had several 
most brutal anonymous letters from Germans in this 
country. Of course the writers were cowards or they 
would have signed their names, but I knew their 
nationality because the handwriting was character- 
istically German. One said he had heard that I had 
recently been ill, and now he hoped to hear of my 
death. Another declared I ought to be put in an 
asylum — I needed to be looked after. A third said 
he wished I could be tied to a torpedo and shot at a 
British warship. Whether he thought I was hard 
enough to penetrate the metal armor, I don’t know.” 

When we discussed the conflict two years later, 
Burroughs’s comments ran in this wise : 

“Now that we are in this big war, I’m trying to 
do my part to help win. I had a piece of ground at 
Riverby sowed to wheat, but when harvest-time 
came I was away, and Julian had the wheat cut and 
fed to the hens, much to my disgust. He thought it 
was too light and weedy to warrant the expense of 
threshing. I buy Liberty Bonds, and I practice econ- 
omy in my habits of living. I try to save in the war- 
winning essentials. For one thing I cut down on 
gasoline by not using my automobile as freely as I 
naturally would. But how utterly thoughtless and 
reckless most people seem to be in this matter of war 
conservation! How they do spend their money! They 


343 


The World War . 

waste right and left, burn up gasoline for pleasure 
tearing about the country, waste food, clothing — 
everything! 

“The war is a fight of democracy against the 
damned German despotism. One or the other will 
be crushed, and we’ve got to beat. I was reading a 
book the other night entitled ‘Europe Unbound,’ 
and I was so stirred up by it that, I gracious! I 
could n’t sleep afterward. The Germans believe in 
Prussianism to the bottom of their shoes, and scorn 
democracy. The two things can’t dwell together on 
the same planet. 

“The Germans have no imagination, no ideality, 
and they don’t add anything to the joy of human 
life. They have a good many of the swine traits. 
They ’re rooters — always delving down in the roots 
of things. They know more about the roots of trees 
than about the leaves. Then, too, there is their love 
of tyranny, of mastery, and the belief that might is 
right. 

“I’ve always liked individual Germans, but as a 
nation I detest them. The scoundrels are already 
talking about the next war. That conceit has got to 
be taken out of them. Just the thought of seeing 
them whipped is enough to keep me alive for years. 
I ’m going to try hard to live to see the war through. 

“If Haig only keeps up his hammering of the Ger- 
man lines, we’ll knock hell out of ’em. I like the idea 
of America’s building a great fleet of airships. If we 


344 John Burroughs Talks 

had twenty thousand of them on the battle-front, 
how they would scatter destruction! Everything 
behind the German lines clear to Berlin would be 
blown to the devil. 

“We can do good work building submarine-chas- 
ers. Some of the new ones fairly make the water 
hot, they are so swift. The German submarines are 
the worst menace we have to contend with, and to 
think that they were invented by an American! 
Confound that man Holland ! 

“It is a great good fortune that we have at the 
head of the nation in this crisis a person of Wilson’s 
caliber, with such high principles and so clear-headed 
— as fortunate as it was that we had Lincoln in the 
Civil War. I admire his statesmanship. At the last 
presidential election, when I was making up my 
mind who to vote for, I held the portraits of Wilson 
and Hughes before me and said, ‘They’re both good 
men, but Wilson is the broader, bigger, better type.’ 

“That decided me. So I voted for Wilson and I 
haven’t for a moment regretted it since. I know 
Hughes, and have had a warm liking for him. In- 
deed, he might have received my vote had it not been 
for his attitude toward Wilson in the campaign. He 
was so narrow, so partisan, so unfair, I could n’t 
stomach him. 

“Roosevelt, who has been a rather close friend of 
mine, showed up no better. The way he abused 
Wilson, calling names and denouncing him, almost 


345 


The World War 

led to my writing Roosevelt a hot letter. Yes, his 
political course during the war has been a great dis- 
appointment. He always wants to be in the lime- 
light and can’t bear to have Wilson the man at the 
helm in the present world turmoil. Here is the most 
wonderful time in all history, and Roosevelt, who has 
been President and is a natural leader and a man of 
the most vigorous convictions and assertiveness, is 
not at the head of national affairs, which he feels 
should be his place. He was n’t even able to get into 
the army — and how sore he has been all the time! 
How he has ranted and scoffed at Wilson! I’ve been 
ashamed of him. Events have proved Wilson’s wis- 
dom and far-sightedness, and I wish Roosevelt was 
generous enough to acknowledge it. 

“I have been critical of Wilson myself at times. 
If I ’d had my way we ’d have been in the war sooner, 
but I know now that it would n’t have been wise. 
The President is patient and far-seeing, and he did 
right to wait until he had the country behind him. 
What a burden he carries! When he gets any leisure 
to think, or to say his prayers, I don’t see. His mes- 
sage in response to the Pope prolonged my life. I was 
delighted with its sober, serious statement. It was 
done so inimitably well that I can never cease to 
applaud it. The shot told. It makes the Germans 
howl. They call him names, and heap no end of 
abuse on him. A determined man with ideals like 
his has the people back of him and won’t stop short 


346 John Burroughs Talks 

of victory. All his war papers are like messages 
written in the sky. They get the attention of the 
entire world, and deserve it. 

“In a letter to Secretary Daniels of the navy I 
said something commendatory of one of the presi- 
dential messages, and he showed the letter to his 
chief. As a result I got a very appreciative missive 
from Mr. Wilson. It was a good deal for him to write 
to me in the thick of things as he is. 

“I have great respect for Daniels. He’s an able 
and independent man, and criticism of him can be 
largely traced to his cutting off booze from the naval 
officers. They are all down on him for interfering 
with their ancient right of getting drunk. Many of 
the people have taken up the same hue and cry. 
Only yesterday one of them was talking to me like a 
fool about him.” 

Now it was November 22, 1918, and as we sat 
before the fire in the bark-covered study, Burroughs 
said: 

“Well, I have lived to see what I so longed for — 
the crushing of the Hun. Surely, he is so crushed that 
he will trouble the world no more. The end of the 
war has been a great relief to me. It was the war that 
I thought of last when I went to bed, and it was the 
war that I thought of the first thing when I awoke. 
Undoubtedly the tension was harmful, and now that 
peace has come I ’ve begun to take on flesh. 


The World War 347 

“When the peace celebrations were held on the 
day the armistice was signed, the eleventh of this 
month, I was so elated that I went to Poughkeepsie 
to share in the rejoicing. But there was such a re- 
dundance of noise and the whole affair was so bois- 
terous and undignified that I had to retire to the 
Y.M.C.A. building to get out of it. The only thing 
I remember with pleasure was meeting a soldier 
who’d been over the top on the European battle- 
ground — actually been over the top! I looked at 
him with a feeling of awe. What a hero he seemed !” 


XXII 

LAST YEARS 

The prospects of Burroughs’s acquiring unaided 
such a donkey as he had expressed a wish for seemed 
not very promising, and after I returned home I 
wrote to Henry Ford suggesting that he might be 
willing to find out where and how a suitable donkey 
could be obtained for his friend. 

Some weeks later I received this telegram : 

Have located young Will Droken Burro, Denver, 
Colorado. Please give shipping address. 

E. G. Liebold 

At first I would not accept the message. Will 
Droken Burro was no one that I knew, and I had no 
interest in the fact that he had been located in 
Denver. Nor had I ever heard of E. G. Liebold. 
But after puzzling over the matter for a few hours, 
it occurred to me that what the telegram referred 
to was a well-broken donkey , and I forwarded direc- 
tions to have the animal sent to Burroughs at West 
Park. 

January 1, 1919, Burroughs wrote: “When you 
let the cat out of the bag that I wanted a donkey, 
you let the donkey in. She has arrived, and I expect 
to enjoy her a great deal. Her four young legs ought 


Last Years 349 

to supplement my old legs just the right way. I 
shall soon find out.” 

A week later he wrote: “The little beast is very 
free with her heels — so free that Dr. Barrus dare 
not go near her. She kicked the hired man the other 
morning. I shall be on my guard when I ride her. 
We are expecting a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Ford. 
He must mount the donkey.” 

On February 20th he wrote: “The donkey is no 
good for me. I am going to give her away or shoot 
her. Do you want her — saddle and bridle and 
blanket? A man here is half a mind to take her, but 
if he does not I must find some one else. Your boys 
might have fun with her if they kept clear of her 
heels.” 

I was much disappointed over the donkey episode. 
What a chance there was for mild adventures and a 
new viewpoint! I have been told that when Bur- 
roughs found out how freely the donkey used her 
heels, some of the things he said about her and 
about me and Henry Ford’s secretary would make 
rather racier reading than any of his remarks that I 
have reported. 

Something about Mr. Ford’s interest in Burroughs 
in these last years was related to me in a picturesque 
way by one of the Roxbury natives, who said: “Once 
when Ford was here visiting John, they were walk- 
ing up through the timber of a birch grove on the 
old farm and found Burroughs’s nephew cutting 


350 John Burroughs Talks 

down the trees, intending to get rid of the grove and 
have a field he could cultivate. John seemed to feel 
bad about it. 

“‘This is the first place where I ever studied the 
nature of birds/ he said to Ford. 

“‘Well/ Ford says, ‘then the grove ought to stay 
here. Don’t let ’em cut it/ 

“‘But I can’t help myself/ John told him. ‘The 
farm belongs to my nephew/ 

“'We’ll fix that/ Ford says, and he talked to the 
nephew and agreed to buy him out for fifteen thou- 
sand dollars. 

“So when he got back to the house, he wrote a 
check for that amount and gave the farm to John. 

“I understand that twice Ford gave John enough 
to cover the expenses of him and one or two com- 
panions for a winter in California. 

“A jewelry store in the village keeps a line of books, 
and has all of Burroughs’s. Since automobiles have 
begun to run, people who come to visit John stop 
there and get one of his books and take it up to the 
farm and ask him to write his name in it. He’s al- 
ways glad to do that. John has lots of visitors — 
mostly long-haired men and short-haired women. 

“He likes to be photographed, but I don’t know 
as he is any worse in that respect than Ford and 
Edison. Whenever they make a trip they’re sure to 
take along a photographer to photograph ’em.” 

I didn’t see Burroughs again after November, 


Last Years 351 

1918, but he wrote me occasional letters which I 
quote from below : 

March , 1919: “I am a Wilson man through and 
through and a League of Nations man through and 
through. Wilson is one of the few men of the ages. 
A League of Nations is bound to come. It will be the 
issu'e of the next presidential election. The Repub- 
lican Party will be knocked higher than a kite, and 
will wake up when it comes down. The people are 
bound to put an end to war and to have a per- 
manent peace.” 

April , 1920: “I have been to Yama Farms where 
Mr. Seaman gave me a great birthday blow-out, in- 
viting about thirty friends to join in the hullabaloo. 

“I am for Hoover because the party leaders do not 
want him, and they do not want him because they 
know they cannot use him. He is a man who does 
not think in terms of party politics, but in terms of 
the greatest good to the whole people. And then, I 
think he has great executive ability and that is the 
kind of man we want in an executive office. 

“We spent three months in California and had 
really a golden winter.” 

September, 1920: “I shall vote for Cox, but am 
doubtful if he wins. It is hard to get any idealism or 
disinterestedness in the average man. Time was 
when nations throve by preying on one another — 
the way of the barbarian — but in our time the 
leading nations of the world form one family. What 


352 John Burroughs Talks 

is good for one is good for all, and what is injurious 
to one is injurious to all. Progress in civilization 
ought to result in their getting closer together with 
a common purpose and cooperation. If it does not, 
civilization is a failure. I wish I felt sure that America 
would, in this crisis, measure up to what she ought 
to do, but narrowness and provincialism may win 
the day. 

“We plan to go to California again in late No- 
vember. I thrive better there and cannot fight the 
winters we have in our climate.” 

He went, but while there became seriously ill. It 
was presently evident that he could not recover, and 
his friends decided to take him back East before his 
failing strength made the journey impossible. He 
was eager to go, and was confident that once he 
reached home beside the Hudson he would get well. 
But when only a few hours more were needed to 
finish the trip, he died, soon after midnight, March 
29, 1921, as the train he was on was speeding across 
Ohio. How pathetic that the life of this lover of the 
quiet country and of familiar home surroundings 
should have come to an end far from his native 
haunts on a railway train! 

In his will was this paragraph: 

“It is my wish that the stone which marks my 
last resting-place shall be of native unhewn rock — 
not white marble or polished granite — and I wish 
my funeral expenses shall not exceed one hundred 


Last Years 353 

dollars, that my casket shall be free of ornament and 
as plain and simple as possible. Let me not be made 
to appear proud and fond of vain show when I am 
dead.” 

His grave is at Roxbury in a hillside pasture of the 
old farm, beside the big glacial boulder on which, 
as a boy, he often sat and dreamily looked off over 
the wide panorama of heights and valleys that were 
in view. 

The sentiment expressed in the will was char- 
acteristic of the man. Pride and ostentation and the 
seeking of notoriety were entirely foreign to him. 
He was a rare soul, courageous, independent, a 
teacher, a prophet, sincere, eloquent, and inspiring 
in what he wrote, and with great personal charm for 
all who in any way sympathized with his tastes and 
ideals. 


THE END 



INDEX 


Adirondacks, 221, 300. 

Ants, 47. 

Apples, in apple hole# 13, 34; for 
“sass,” 50. 

Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 70, 235. 

Atlantic Monthly , 30, 178, 253. 

Audubon, stimulates B.’s interest in 
birds, 182. 

Barms, Dr. Clara, 280, 300. 

Bees, winter-killed, 47, 58; safety 
from their sting, 110. 

Birds, B.’s early knowledge of, 43, 
182; boyhood treatment of, 44; 
tries to tame, 45; begins to study 
birds, 182; appeal of birds to B., 
240, 247; variations in songs of, 
23, 242; flight of, 241; migrating 
of, 243; roosting of, 243; blue- 
birds, 75; bobolinks, 24, 241, 243; 
crows, 216, 243; eagle, 217; Eng- 
lish skylark, 241; English spar- 
rows, 245, 329 ; hermit thrush, 23 ; 
hummingbird’s nest, 180; king- 
birds, 22; marsh hawk, 22; night- 
hawk, 291; orioles, 146; oven- 
bird, 212; owls, 10, 41, 42, 216; 
partridges, 39, 42; phcebes, 38, 
271; prairie-hen, 83; robins, 141, 
224, 242, 247 ; rose-breasted gros- 
beak, 212; rusty blackbirds, 209; 
scarlet tanager, 211, 241; screech 
owls, 216, 277; solitary vireo, 
122; starlings, 246; swallows, 
243; whip-poor-wills, 215; wood 
thrush, 23. 

Boston, first visit to, 302. 

Boyhood, 4-22, 32-53, 59-72, 108, 
174, 226, 249, 309. 

Bull, exploit with, 35. 

Bumblebee, 248. 

Burroughs, Amy Kelly, mother of 
B., 6, 7; her work, 13, 14, 15, 19, 
47 ; drank cold tea, 29. 


Burroughs, Chauncey, father of B.J 
education, 6; experienced reli- 
gion, 7; in anti-rent war, 19, 21; 
expert ox-driver, 36; tremendous 
voice, 36, 49, 150; loads gun for 
B., 39; annual trip to sell butter, 
47; on Sunday, 226; his religious 
paper, 229; satisfaction in his 
church, 230. 

Burroughs, Curtis, brother of B., 
257, 258, 274. 

Burroughs, Eden, grandfather of 
B., 5, 198. 

Burroughs, Hiram, oldest brother 
of B., at Slabsides, 154, 156, 158, 
213; his characteristics, 213. 

Burroughs, John, birth, 4; birth- 
place, 5; brothers and sisters, 7; 
boyhood, 7-22, 32-53; some 

youthful sweethearts, 49, 52; 
schooldays, 59-72; teaching, 77- 
89; courtship and marriage, 82, 
85; wants to enlist in Union 
army, 88, 93, 179; ten years in 
Washington, 93-104; Bank Re- 
ceiver, 130, 136; Bank Examiner, 
136, 141; postmaster, 136; farm- 
ing by the Hudson, 138-152; ex- 
periences as a writer, 176, 185, 
254, 313; use of rustic words, 264; 
his travels, 300-304; B. and chil- 
dren, 57; B. and believer that the 
world is flat, 225; elected to 
American Academy, 225; his lost 
watch, 214; death, 352; will, 352; 
grave, 353. 

Burroughs, Julian, son of B., 7, 11, 
27, 30, 58, 114, 117, 163, 262, 314, 
327, 333. 

Burroughs, Ursula North, wife of 
B., courtship and marriage, 82, 
85; at Riverby, 27, 32, 58, 76, 126, 
165, 171, 225, 282, 297; chases 
the ducks, 74; Mrs. B. and Slab- 


356 Index 


sides, 128, 161, 202; B. discusses 
Mrs. B., 161; their life together, 
162; Mrs.jB. as a caretaker of B.’s 
apparel, 239; some remarks on 
her housekeeping, 260; her keen- 
ness in business details, 311; her 
death and the loss B. felt, 318; 
burial among her own people, 
320. 

Butterfly, earliest, 248. 

California, 303, 350, 352. 

Canada, visit to, 302. 

Catskills, B.’s early home in, 4-19; 
anti-rent war in, 19; glen in, 199; 
bobolinks in, 241; dwellers in, 
275. 

Chipmunks, hunting, 39; greeting, 
44; carry away corn, 218. 

Christian Science, its advantages 
and defects, 236. 

Cicada, 248. 

Cities, comments on, 50, 219. 

Civil War, B.’s desire to enlist, 88, 
93, 179; helping in a hospital, 100. 

Cleveland, Grover, 287. 

Colleges, teaching of literature in, 
117; B. talks to young women at, 
121 . 

Coons at Slabsides, 218. 

Cooperstown, B. a student at sem- 
inary in, 70, 176. 

Cows, 35, 36, 56, 97. 

Cuba, visit to, 336. 

Darwin, Charles, 187. 

Dogs, friendliness for, 57, 73, 192; 
boy throws stones at B.’s dog, 
109; meeting an ugly dog, 111; 
B.’s dog, 126, 213; fights another 
dog, 149; barks at coon hunters, 
155; attacks a waterfall, 159; goes 
for boatride, 208. 

Donkey, B. longs for a, 339; Henry 
Ford provides one, 348. 

Ducks, 74, 157, 209, 244. 

Edison, Thomas A., 321-325, 328, 
334, 337. 

Education, B. objects to study at 


night, 27; making the child think, 
88; ideals in, 108-125. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, B. influ- 
enced by, 176, 178; an estimate 
of by Henry Ford, 340. 

England, visits to, 300; in World 
War, 340. 

Farming, in the Catskills when B. 
was a boy, 32-37, 68; at Riverby, 
138-150. 

Fishing, on Sunday, 37; through 
ice, 45; with hands, 64; for eels 
and catfish in the Hudson, 137. 

Florida, visits to, 303, 321. 

Flowers, comments on cultivated, 
45; liking for wild flowers, 239; 
children and, 112, 115; dogtooth 
violet, 121; hepatica, 239; skunk- 
cabbage, 57. 

Ford, Henry, 319, 325-337, 348. 

Foxes, barking, 10; chased by 
hounds, 218, 331. 

Frogs, 212. 

Fruit-raising at Riverby, 138-140, 
142-148, 157, 160, 315. 

Geese, wild, 183, 244. 

Gilder, Richard Watson, 293. 

Gould, Jay, schoolmate of B., 66, 
309; father of, 20; grave of par- 
ents, 226. 

Grasshoppers, 248. 

Hay-barn study at Woodchuck 
Lodge, 273, 278. 

Health, B.’s own health and his 
comments on health in general, 
28, 29, 73, 92, 133, 142, 150, 203, 
219, 274, 280, 293, 303, 307, 320, 
338, 352. 

Holyoke paper mill, B.’s visit to, 
304. 

Hoover, Herbert C., 351. 

Horses, 36, 148, 203. 

Howells, William D., 29, 189. 

Hudson River, 3, 4, 126; B.’s first 
sight of, 48; his comments on, 
137, 197. 

Hunting in boyhood, 39. 


Index 


Illinois, teaching in, 83; prairie 
country, 83. 

Income, from maple sugar, 34; as 
teacher, 78, 82, 83; government 
clerk, 94, 103; Bank Receiver and 
Bank Examiner, 130, 136; from 
fruit-growing, 139, 142, 147; 

other items about, 309-316. 

Insect pests, 246. 

Irving, Washington, his birthday, 
4; comments on, 189. 

Kelly, “Granther,” father of B.’s 
mother, 8. 

Lincoln, Abraham, B. meets, 101; 
death of, 101 ; estimate of, 287, 

Mail, 265-269. 

Mississippi River, 302. 

Morgan, J. Pierpont, 286. 

Mormons, 237. 

Mt. Holyoke, visit to, 304. 

Muir, John, compared with Tho- 
reau, 188; visits Slabsides, 210. 

Nature-Fakers, 252. 

Nature study in schools and col- 
leges, 115, 118, 240. 

New England people, 25. 

Newspapers, 119. 

New York City, B. visits, 64; walks 
with schoolboys in Central Park, 
116; buys second-hand books in, 
175. 

New York State people as readers, 
25. 

Old School Baptists, also called 
“Primitive” and “Hardshell,” 7, 
226. 

Oxen, 36* 55. 

Peach crotch water-finders, 25. 

Potomac, B. narrowly escapes 
drowning in, 96. 

Rabbits, 167, 218. 

Railroads, B.’s first ride on cars, 82; 
noisy, 219. 


857 

Reading, B.’s literary likes and dis- 
likes, 114, 117, 174-191, 252, 299. 
Religion, 80, 226. 

Riverby, B.’s farm beside the Hud- 
son, first visit to, 131; 4, 22, 27, 

57, 126, 130-157, 160, 164, 171, 
173, 197, 282, 306, 317. 

Riverby, stone house at, built, 133 ; 

4, 23, 58, 126, 140, 165, 282, 319. 
Riverby, study at, built, 140; 31, 

58, 164, 173, 283, 308, 338. 
Riverby, summer-house at, 4, 126, 

141, 157. 

Rockefeller, John D., 38, 127. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, handshaking 
when President, 101 ; and Nature- 
Fakers, 254; B.’s acquaintance 
with and comments on, 284-292, 
302, 339, 344. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr., at Slab- 
sides, 210. -< 

Roxbury, B.’s native town in the 
Catskills, 5; house in which B. 
was born, 5; townspeople’s inter- 
est in his books, 24; the old farm, 
6, 29, 32, 90, 192, 249, 257; church 
B. family attended, 226. 

Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 225. 
Schools, B. buys schoolbooks, 35; 
runs away from school, 45; two 
girl schoolmates, 49; recollec- 
tions of schooldays, 59-72; school 
children’s manners, 108. 

Schools B. went to from age of four 
or five to nineteen, the “Old 
Stone Jug,” 59; gray schoolhouse 
by brook, 62; red schoolhouse on 
higher ground, 63, 91; Hedding 
Literary Institute, Ashland, 69; 
Cooperstown Seminary, 70. 
Schools B. taught from April, 1854, 
to October, 1863, Tongore, N.Y., 
78, 82; Buffalo Grove, 111., 83; 
High Falls, N.Y., 85; Rosendale, 
N.Y., 85; East Orange, N.J., 86; 
Marlborough, N.Y., 87; Olive, 
N.Y., 87; Highland Falls, N.Y., 
87. 

Scotland, visit to, 301. 


358 Index 


Sheep, 35, 36, 56. 

Skunks, 296. 

Slabsides, 105, 129, 153, 167, 171, 
173, 192, 223, 239; Mrs. B. talks 
of, 129, 161; naming of, 201; why 
B. abandoned, 273; Roosevelt at, 
288. 

Smith College, B. visits, 304. 

Spook stories, 8. 

Springs, 250. 

Squirrels, flying, and Roosevelt, 
290 ; captive in B.’s study, 296. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, as a let- 
ter-writer, 186. 

Storms, motion of, 234. 

Sugar-making, at the old farm, 5, 
34, 258, 262; at Riverby, 138. 

Sunday in B.’s boyhood, 37, 226. 

Taft, William Howard, B.’s com- 
ments on, 285, 291, 292. 

Teaching, B.’s ten years of, 77-89; 
his theories about, 108. 

Thoreau, Henry D., quoted, 11; as 
a writer, 188, 334. 

Thunderstorms, 10, 61. 

Toad’s song, 212. 

Tobacco, B.’s comments on, 219, 
294, 296. 

Trees, B.’s love of, 24; lightning- 
struck, 217. 

Travels, 300-304. 

Vassar College girls, 124, 209. 

Visitors, 270-274, 350. 

“Waiting,’! 179. 


Washington, B.’s ten years in, 93- 
104; visits Roosevelt at White 
House, 284. 

Weasel, 217. 

West Park, village where B. lived 
beside the Hudson, 3; a little 
house at, 119; B.’s first visit to, 
131; its inhabitants, 150; 153, 
164. 

West Point Academy Library, 87, 
182. 

White’s “Natural History of Sel- 
borne,” 3, 187, 301. 

Whitman, Walt, in Washington, 93, 
168; in Camden, 169; B.’s esti- 
mate of, 169, 179, 182, 312; at 
Coney Island, 250. 

Wilson, Woodrow, values Ford, 
335; B. criticises, 339; B. ap- 
plauds, 344, 351. 

Woman suffrage, 124, 128. 

Women and fashion, 123. 

Woodchuck Lodge, first season at, 
259; described, 272; B. tells of 
life there, 274-279; a near dis- 
aster at, 332. 

Woodchucks, pest at old farm, 41, 
262; a woodchuck at Slabsides, 
217; adventures with at Wood- 
chuck Lodge, 277, 279. 

World War, 308, 339-347. 

Writing, B.’s experiences as an au- 
thor, 70, 176-185, 253, 254, 
313. 

Yellowstone National Park, with 
Roosevelt at, 285, 302. 


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